Barely two weeks after the RH Law was passed, James Imbong, son of CBCP legal counsel Jo Imbong, and his wife Lovely-Ann Imbong, filed a petition to stop the implementation of the newly-minted law. The said petition is an orgy of fallacies, to say the least. And orgies, for those who were not yet informed, are what will result from the passage of the RH Law, or so the petitioners seem to imply.

On a more serious note, the Supreme Court’s reaction to the petition should be closely studied because at its heart is the battle for the “ideals and aspirations” of Filipinos. According to the petitioners, the RH Law “negates and frustrates” the said ideals and aspirations. The petitioners even go as far as saying that the RH Law mocks “the nation’s Filipino culture – noble and lofty in its holdings on life, motherhood and family.”

What is curious about this aspect of the petition is that reproductive health supporters can use exactly the same words to uphold the constitutionality of the law. Majority of Filipinos support the RH Law precisely because it upholds our ideals and aspirations. Using the words of the same Preamble the petitioners used, it can be pointed out that our nation needs the RH Law to “build a just and human society” and “promote the common good, conserve and develop our patrimony, and secure to ourselves and our posterity, the blessings of independence and democracy under the rule of law and a regime of truth, justice, freedom, love, equality, and peace.”

Both supporters and opponents of the RH Law agree that our country should be built upon values and the appreciation of the sanctity of life. Hence, it all boils down to what one means when one uses the words “values” and “sanctity of life”. What the Imbongs seem to forget is that the secular nature of Philippine government demands that our foundational values be secular values, and if these secular values conflicts with the values of a particular religion, then so much the worse for the religious values. While it is true that the petitioners tried their best to present secular arguments against the RH Law, the density of fallacies presented in the petition strongly suggests puritanical and religious motivations behind its filing.

How the High Court responds to the petition should be studied closely because the battle for the law on divorce and marriage equality will surely be fought in the same front. In other words, the issue of divorce and marriage equality will once again see us wrestling with the “ideals and aspirations” of Filipinos.

I want to live in a just and humane society where the common good is promoted, where national patrimony is conserved and developed, and where the next generation is raised in “noble and lofty” values that hold life sacred. This is why the RH Law has my support. And this is why I will advocate the passage of a law on divorce and marriage equality. I am confident that my ideals and aspirations are the ideals and aspirations of many Filipinos as well.

Many people around you are commemorating the humble coming of Christ by extravagantly and wastefully observing pagan practices. What are you to do, lonely heathen? Fear not, you can commemorate the birth of Isaac Newton by celebrating Newtonmas! Here are a few tips on how to do it:

1. Tell everyone that like Jesus, Newton wasn’t really born on Christmas Day. Although he was also born on Christmas Day. Wait, what? Well, it has something to do with some confusion between two calendars. When Isaac Newton was born, most of the world was already using the more accurate Gregorian calendar, which is the same calendar we are using up to this day. However the English, being English, were still using the old Julian calendar during the time of Newton’s birth, and in the Julian calendar little Isaac was born on the 25^th of December, 1642. During the time, however, the Julian calendar was already off by more than a week so that in the Gregorian calendar, Newton’s birthday is actually January 4, 1643.

2. Since it’s the season for Newton, buy your godchildren prisms as presents! Include little “research problems” that they can try to solve using the prisms. For example, you can ask them to convince their parents that when all the colors of the rainbow are combined, what you get is white light. In this way, they can reenact Newton’s experimentum crucis, which is not a Harry Potter spell but rather is one of the most beautiful and elegant experiments in science.

 

3. If you’re feeling a little indulgent, buy yourself a Newtonian telescope and discover the beauties of heavenly bodies, both those in the sky and those living next door.

 

4. Feeling the spirit of Newtonmas strong in you? Approach your little nephews and nieces and teach them a bit of Newtonian physics. Tell them about the three rules that obeyed by everything around us.

• First rule, things don’t budge when nothing budges them. In other words, unless an object is pushed or pulled, it will keep on moving the way it did. (If it wasn’t moving in the fist place, then it will keep on staying put.)
• Second rule, the heavier a thing is, the more you need to push or pull it in order to change the way it moves. Also, if you want to change how something moves more, then you must give it a stronger nudge.
• Third rule, when you kick something, it will always kick you back. And it will kick you back as strongly as you kicked it.
• Tell your nephews and nieces that remembering the above rules will help them avoid the following mistake:

 

5. If you want in on Newton’s extreme eccentricity, you can try performing some of his more crazy-ass experiments. See the bodkin below? Newton stuck something similar into his eye socket and prodded his eye ball with it to study how images get formed in the human eye. I’m not kidding you, the guy was batshit crazy.

 

8. Read the following passage to all your smart friends: “This chaos is called our arsenic, our air, our Luna, our magnase, our Calebs, but in diverse respect, because our matter undergoes various states before our regal diadem is extracted from the menstrual blood of our whore. So learn who the comrades of Cadmus are, and who the serpent who ate them, and what the hollow oak on which Cadmus transfixed the serpent! Learn what the doves of Diana are which conquer the lion by beating him.” This passage is from the alchemical tract The Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King, one of Newton’s favorite. Yes, even the smartest people can subscribe to the most unfounded beliefs. We should therefore be ever vigilant about the things we believe in. Newton’s example reminds us of the beauty of having no one person as absolute intellectual authority. In short, it helps us appreciate being a freethinker.

So there you go, a few holiday tips from one heathen to another.  This Newtonmas, remember to give the gift of discovery to the people you love. And don’t forget to have a happy holiday!

No, the world is not going to end this week. That belief is too unfounded to be even worth a rebuttal.

Now that we have that out of the way, let us talk about more productive things, like how to really end the world. But before we can start with our crash course on world ending, let us first look at what people usually mean when they say the end is nigh. Based on a survey done by a reputable organization composed solely of the author of this article, when people say “the world is ending” they usually mean one the following things:

1. they lost their iPhone;
2. human civilization will collapse or people will be wiped out from the face of the Earth;
3. all or a significant portion of life on Earth will end;
4. the universe will end.

Since no one really cares if some hipster lost his iPhone, I hope everyone agrees that we can skip the first item. Let us now take a look at how we can successfully bring about the other three world-ending scenarios.

 

Bye Bye Humans

Here’s how you end human civilization: you do nothing. Or, to be more precise, you just allow humans to keep on doing what they are doing right now. I’m not kidding; just let them carry on with their lives. They’re already civilization-destroying forces just as they are.

How does this work? Here’s how it goes. If humans live as they live right now, then the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere will just keep on going up. This will have the effect of further messing up the Earth’s climate. If humans do not change, the climate will.

 

But how can climate change end human civilization? When it gets hot in here, can’t people just follow Nelly’s advice and take off all their clothes? Excellent as Nelly’s advice is (and I surely recommend it to some of more well-endowed human specimens), it simply wouldn’t do because the Earth’s systems are just so damned complicated. Even a mere 1-degree increase in global average temperature can ruin the whole delicate balance of the Earth’s life-supporting systems.

 

Let me mention just a few of the many possible nightmare scenarios that can be brought about by climate change.

First, sea level will rise significantly, causing many major cities to get flooded. If fishes want Manila City, they could inherit it someday, although I already here them saying “Thanks, but no thanks.” Students of UST know for a fact that nature has already been doing not-so-dry runs of this thing, and for those who wish to see the end of human civilization it’s all looking good.

Second, many ecosystems will be messed up and might even crash. Scientists who study the details of this nightmare scenario usually get a lot less sleep at night. But just to give you an idea, when an important ecosystem crashes, farms will fail, the sea  will give up providing fishes (and I’m not even talking about overfishing yet), and the creatures that provide humans with much needed oxygen might simply call it quits.

If those scenarios have not impressed you yet, then this one might. Some scientists think that climate change might cause the ocean’s thermohaline circulation to stop. The thermohaline circulation acts as the ocean’s conveyor belt, distributing oxygen, carbon dioxide and nutrients throughout the ocean’s many levels. If this circulation stops, then much of the ocean will be reduced to a big puddle of stagnant water. When this happens, many ecosystems in the ocean will get messed up, and we’re back to the scenario discussed in the previous paragraph.

Well, that’s just climate change. There are other things that can cause the crash of human civilization without any help from a malevolent Loki figure, like the world’s oil reserves running dry, or overpopulation causing a population crash just like what happened to the reindeer of St. Matthew Island.

If you want to be more proactive in bringing about the demise of human civilization, then you might want to introduce a microbial pathogen that is downright nasty, spreads fast, and is quick to mutate and develop resistance to drugs, quite like the virus that caused SARS. Since international flights are so common nowadays, this pathogen will find it easy to go global. And while you’re at it, why not make it a virus that attacks the human immune system? In other words, why not make a nastier version of the HIV? Also, if you feel a little creative and sadistic, try to go for a zombie apocalypse virus. Although making it spread globally could be a bit tricky considering how strict airport authorities are when it comes to passengers who bite their airplane seatmates.

 

Hurtling Hunks of Rock

But if you really want to end a world, why just go for just one species out of the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions that call the Earth their home? When humans go extinct, will bad ass tardigrades give a damn? No.

 

Species come and go all the time; extinction is a part of life on Earth and it is the ultimate fate of all species that exist. Dodos and dinosaurs are not losers for going extinct, they just got there before humans did. (Although at the rate humans are going, they won’t be far behind.) Scientists estimate that around 99.9% of all species that have ever existed have now gone extinct. In fact, every few million years several species go extinct.

However, for us who want to see the world end, several extinctions every few million years are not enough. What we want is a mass extinction event, a massive blowout where up to 90% of all species on Earth bid goodbye to existence within a very short span of time. (And by “very short” we mean around a few million years.) Feel free to choose any of the following means to bring about your desired mass extinction event:

• Send a big hunk of rock (an asteroid, a comet or a big meteor) hurtling towards the Earth. If this hunk of rock is big and fast enough, its collision with the Earth can release the energy contained in millions of tons of TNT. How much energy is that? Well, just enough to boil much of the ocean. It will also be enough send tons of dust into the air, covering the Sun for years on end and causing the Earth’s climate to change – and we’re back to climate change, yay!
• Your big hunk of rock does not really need to hit the Earth to cause a lot of damage. If it’s big enough, even a close encounter with the Earth can cause a drastic change in the Earth’s orbital tilt, rate of rotation or distance from the Sun. If any of the mentioned things happen, creatures everywhere will suddenly find themselves in places too hot, too cold, too humid or too dry for them. Once this happens, many of the more choosy creatures – which is, well, most of them – will say goodbye to existence, and a cascade of extinctions will ensue.
• Turn up the Sun. Or, alternately, turn in down. Just do it quickly. The Sun has been having mood swings for billions for years now. However, it’s been doing it slowly enough that a lot of the Earth’s creatures were able to adapt to many of them. A sudden overabundance of sunlight, or a sudden lack of it, will surely change the climate drastically. Yes, you’ll never go wrong with climate change, fellow world-ender.
• Let the Sun go red giant. It will do this a few billion years from now, anyway, so why prolong the suffering of all earthlings? Go ahead and let their star become a big red ball that will boil all their oceans and possibly even consume their planet.

•  Help the humans do their work of causing the sixth mass extinction. Scientists have discovered five mass extinction events in the 4.5-billion year history of the Earth. The most popular of the five is the one that led to the demise of all non-avian dinosaurs. Nearly all scientists agree that it was caused by an asteroid impact around 65 million years ago. (If you want to sound smart, call this the K-Pg mass extinction event. K-Pg stands for Cretaceous-Paleogene. It was between these two periods that the extinction event happened. It used to be called the K-T event, for Cretaceous-Tertiary.) The greatest of the five, however, was the Permian extinction event, also known as the Great Dying (dun dun dun!). The Great Dying (dun dun dun!) involved, well, a great amount of dying. 90% of all the species on Earth alive at the time, to be more precise. Many scientists think that a sixth extinction event is on the way, and it is caused by the joy humans derive from cutting down trees and polluting the seas. Hence, if you want to see the end of the world as we know it, you might give these Homo sapiens a little help in their endeavor.

• Life on Earth is resilient. The cosmos has been sending all sorts of nasty stuff to Earth for billions of years, and yet life goes on. If you really want to obliterate life on Earth, you might want to send a rogue black hole to the Solar System. The black hole will gulp up the Sun and all its planets and that’s the end of it goodbye thank y’all.
• If you want to be a bit more dramatic, you can make a supernova explode a few light-years from the Sun. Even though it’s billions of kilometers away from Earth, it will still incinerate all the planets of the Solar System, ending life in this sector of the galaxy for good.

 

Crunching and Heat

Yes, yes, I know, with billions upon billions of planets in the universe some of you might find it lame to end life in just one planet. You want to end all life in the galaxy, even in the universe, right? Well, unfortunately for us, the universe is such damned big place. How big, you ask? Well, damned big. If you want numbers, the observable universe is about 46 billion light years or 4,300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 meters across. Good luck with trying  to comprehend that.

One way of ending something this huge is by adding enormous amounts of matter to it. You can even add dark matter, if you’re into that sort of thing. If you add enough matter, this will cause the universe to become closed. In a closed universe that lacks dark energy, there will be enough matter to stop the current expansion. This will lead to a universal contraction and an eventual Big Crunch, which is just a delicious name for the opposite of the eve more deliciously-named Big Bang.

 

Unfortunately for those who like to crunch, the universe has a lot of this thing they call dark energy. Scientists know very little about dark energy, but whatever it is, it seems to exert a repulsive force that accelerates the expansion of the universe. If this is indeed the case, the only way for the universe to “end” is by undergoing a heat death. The heat death of the universe will happen when all the energy in the universe will be converted to useless energy, that is, energy that cannot be used to do work. This is given by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which says that as time goes by, the energy in the universe gets more evenly distributed. Evenly distributed energy is heat, which is energy that cannot be exploited to do anything useful. Since life requires energy that can be used to do work, the head dead universe will not be able to support life of any kind.

Now to the important question, how can you bring about the heat death of the universe? Answer: you do nothing; let the Second Law of Thermodynamics do its work. Give it time. Be patient.

 

Take Home

So there you go, a teaser course on how to end the world. By now I think you would’ve noticed that it’s not really that difficult helping the world reach its demise. With lots of humans caring greatly about trivial things and little about things that matter, the world needs little help to meet its destruction. As a matter of fact, tremendous effort is expected not from those who want to end the world, but from those who want to pass it on the next generation. Even more effort is required from those who want to see a better tomorrow for their descendants. So it’s time to stop reading this article and start help building a better world for all of us. After all, the world is not ending anytime soon.

Now that the hoopla over Curiosity’s landing has died down, let us stand back and examine what has been achieved to see if it was really worth all that hype.

Below is a picture of Mars as seen from Earth. That reddish dot in the sky is an alien world hurtling and spinning through the unimaginable vastness of space at astounding velocities, billions of kilometers away from Earth. The smartest members of our species have just sent a laboratory on wheels to that dot. But they did not just aim for that dot, they aimed for a tiny pixel within a pixel within that dot. And they hit the mark. Soon, that lab on wheels will rove its way around a very tiny portion of that little bright spot in the night sky. If that does not make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on their end, then I do not know what will.

 

 

And now that we have placed things in perspective, I believe it’s time for Curiosity itself to tell us the rest of its story.

 

Curiosity Speaks

Hello, my name is Curiosity. I am the rover of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) program. I know I am animate only in the broadest sense and that my artificial intelligence is comparable to that of a fly, but allow me this conceit of having conscious thought, if only to tell the story of my mission in Mars. It is, after all, also the story of my cousins, Spirit and Opportunity. It is also the story of Mars. Ultimately, it is also the story of life on Earth. My story is your story, too.

When I landed safely on the surface of Mars on the 6^th of August, 2012, my parents at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) were ecstatic. Their ecstasy is understandable not only because they have high hopes for me, but also because my landing was daring. In fact, it was so risky I wouldn’t blame you if you think they were a bit nutty when they planned my entry, descent and landing. To provide a comparison, my cousins Spirit and Opportunity touched down on the surface of the red planet surrounded by giant airbags while I was dropped naked. (In this way, I am more human-like than my predecessors.) The slogan “Dare mighty things” was well chosen for my landing.

I may be beautiful and sophisticated, but I am also hardy. To appreciate this, imagine what I had to survive during my “7 minutes of terror”. Upon my entry to Mars’ thin atmosphere, I was travelling at a speed of 21,000 kilometers per hour. That’s more than 60 times the speed of sound. At that speed I would be able to circle the world in less than two hours. From such unimaginable velocity, I had to decelerate to zero in a mere 7 minutes. At one point during my descent, I survived a deceleration of 9g. Imagine stopping from 120 kph in less than half a second – basically the definition of a fatal car accident – that’s 9g.

 

While the whole world celebrates my safe landing, the challenges I am to face have only begun. Although it is my home from now on, Mars will also be my constant enemy. Unlike Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom, the real Mars is a world very different from Earth. With temperatures ranging from –15°C in the summer to –100°C in the winter, it forbidding even to most robots and extremophiles. But cold as it is on the Martian surface, the pressure here is so low that if you were to stand next to me without wearing a space suite, your blood will boil away into the sparse atmosphere. (That scene from Watchmen when Dr. Manhattan brought Silk Spectre to the surface of Mars is a reminder of how difficult it is for human intuition to understand the environment of another planet.) If any creature evolved to survive on Mars’s surface, it would find the pressure on the summit of Mt. Everest crushingly high.

The hypothetical Martian would also find the Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere exceedingly poisonous. For you earthbound animals who have evolved to handle oxygen so well, it is forgivable that you forget how potent an oxidizing agent it actually is. Here on the fourth planet, the oxygen is locked in the rusty soil and rock that gives the planet its characteristic color. Since Mars’ thin atmosphere is composed largely of carbon dioxide, it will not only suffocate any human foolish enough to breathe it in, it will suffocate even fire. No campfire or candle will burn on the surface of the my new home planet.

The Martian surface is also buffeted by nearly direct solar radiation. Mars does not have an ozone layer. It does not even have a magnetosphere, which means the fierce “solar wind” batters its atmosphere like crazy. And because Mars lacks a significant magnetic field, no auroras streak its pinkish sky. Using a magnetic compass for navigation is not an option here.

 

Finally, there are the notorious dust storms of Mars. Because of a combination of low pressure and low gravity, the dust particles on the Martian surface are eager to be airborne. My predecessors have warned me that such storms can rage for months on end. Luckily, my parents at NASA designed me so that I do not depend on the Sun for my energy. Instead of having solar panels like Spirit and Opportunity, I am, like Vikings 1 and 2, powered by the heat generated by a radioactive isotope I carry around with me.

And speaking of power, I need lots of it. After all, I am a not just an explorer, I am a science laboratory on wheels. I carry with me tools as simple as cameras and light microscopes to equipment as complex as a gas chromatograph coupled to a mass spectrometer. (I have at least 4 kinds of spectrometers. You cannot have too many spectrometers.) I use my equipment to analyze the composition of interesting rocks I happen to pass by. However, I do not limit myself to the rocks on the surface. I am armed with a laser gun that blasts off surface rocks,  allowing me to analyze the chemistry of the underlying rocks. I am a mean machine. If intelligent Martians see me walking around their planet, they would think earthlings are waging war against them. It’s like War of  the Worlds, only it’s the other way around.

My parents at NASA call me a robot scientist. In that case, I am a robot meteorologist, geologist, and chemist. Using my powerful instruments, more numerous and sophisticated than the ones aboard Spirit and Opportunity, my mission here is to study the climate of Mars, examine its rocks, and peer into its history. For these purposes my landing site, Gale Crater, was carefully and well chosen. Gale Crater houses kilometers upon kilometers of exposed rock layers. For a terrestrial analogy, think Grand Canyon. Because of its exposed rock strata, Gale Crater is like an open book into parts of Mars’ history. Studying the rock layers at Gale Crater might provide clues to the following questions: Why is Mars so different from Earth? Was there ever plate tectonics on Mars? And did water play an important role in Mars’ history?

I am also here to search for water. Such is a daunting task given how bone-dry Mars is. Compared to the red planet’s surface, the Sahara Desert is a lush, wet forest of life. Not even Frank Herbert’s Arrakis can match the dryness of the real Barsoom.

 

However, there are tantalizing clues that liquid water once flowed in abundance on the ancient Martian surface. Orbiting space probes have taken pictures of what appears to be dried river channels, deltas, and flood plains. Spirit and Opportunity even discovered mineral formations that probably formed in the presence of neutral water. Even more intriguing are the suggestions that there’s more water on Mars today than was initially thought. Much of this is heavily debated by earthbound scientists. The results of my investigations here on Mars may end these debates. It may also start new ones.

You can also call me a robot biologist, although what that means no one clearly knows. In fact, one of my missions is to clarify what it really means to study life. When Viking 1, Viking 2, Spirit, and Opportunity tried to search for life on Mars, their tests were riddled with false positives and inconclusive results. The world even witnessed bedazzled NASA scientists excitedly, and some would say carelessly, announcing signs of “alien life” at every opportunity. Their failures remind you humans how ignorant you are of this thing called life. Because NASA has learned from the failures of my predecessors, I am not going to search for life directly. Instead, I am going to look for conditions that you think are “suitable for life”. For life “as you know it”, at least.

 

The success of my landing proves that you humans can achieve mighty things if only you work together. Wars and bigotry are a waste of your energy, resources, and lives. By successfully doing what has been deemed be crazy, my example has the power to encourage a generation of dreamers.

By now I think you understand why I am here on this desolate wilderness called Mars. By studying this world, I can give you humans more insights into your own. By examining this seemingly dead planet, I can help you understand the fragile balance of your living globe. By probing a planet possibly devoid of life, I can help you know more about what it means to be alive.

As for those dreamers my success will inspire, know that I will be here patiently awaiting the coming of your descendants to the surface of the red planet.

Higgs Hoopla

Last 4th of July, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (also known as CERN  – don’t ask me why) made the announcement that they have detected a particle that could possibly be the long sought after Higgs boson.

As a non-hipster science fan, I find it heartwarming that a scientific discovery made in the French-Swiss underground scene is finally making it into the mainstream. However, I noticed that many people are at a loss when it comes to comprehending the excitement surrounding this Higgs thingy. After all, where in the big picture of science does this so-called “God particle” fit in?

 

The Higgs boson is one of the few missing pieces of the Standard Model of particle physics. If the particle detected this week was indeed a Higgs boson, that’s +100 points for the Standard Model. The Standard Model is currently our best theory when it comes to explaining the behavior of our universe’s basic ingredients. Over past decades, it has been very successful at predicting how every known particle behaves and interacts.

If the universe is a stage, the Standard Model gives us the best insider story about the cast of characters and the role each character plays. Before we can describe what part the Higgs boson plays, we must first introduce the other members of the cast.

 

Enter the Leptons

The first members of the cast are the light leptons. There are six kinds of free-living leptons. The first three have charges, and they are called electrons, muons and tau particles. The next three don’t have charges, and they are called neutrinos. There are three kinds of neutrinos: electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos and tau neutrinos.

Electrons are part of the atoms that make up most of the material things we handle everyday. In fact, electrons are the first subatomic particles to be discovered. You can read this article on a computer screen only because humans have mastered the art of making electrons the way they want it to move.

Muons are similar to electrons, only they are heavier and short-lived. Tau particles are even heavier and more short-lived! In particle physics jargon, we say that the electron is stable while the muon and tau particle are unstable. (Most people are, unfortunately, like muons in more ways than one.) It is because of their short lives that we do not meet muons and tau particles in our daily affairs.

Neutrinos are very light and elusive particles. They are also neutrally charged, which means that they do not get repelled or attracted by other charges. In fact, they very seldom interact with other particles. This is why it took scientists a while before they finally detected them. In this regard, neutrinos are basically ninja particles!

Their elusiveness aside, neutrinos are actually everywhere! Right this instant, there are billions upon billions of neutrinos whizzing through your body like bullets flying though mist. You are not feeling it precisely because neutrinos mostly ignore other particles and are ignored by other particles. In fact, they can pass through the Earth like the Earth is not there.

Neutrinos recently made the news when some scientists thought they found neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. It was later discovered that neutrinos don’t break the universe’s speed limit after all.

 

Six Quarks for Muster Mark

The next members of our cast of characters are the quarks. There are also six of them: the up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom quarks (aaawww yeah).

The six quarks are grouped according to “generation”. The up and down quarks belong to the first generation, the charm and strange to the second, and the top and bottom to the third. Quarks in each generation are heavier than those in the previous generation.

What distinguishes the quarks from the leptons is the fact that we do not find free-living quarks. Quarks are always tightly glued to other quarks to form hadrons. When a hadron is composed of a quark and its anti-quark glued together, we call it a meson. Meanwhile, when a hadron is composed of a triad of quarks, we call it a baryon.

You have quadrillions of hadrons in you, and so is the computer screen you are staring at right now. Why? Because the nucleus of atoms are made of protons and neutrons, and protons and neutrons are hadrons. To be more specific, they are baryons; protons and neutrons are made of three quarks glued together very tightly. The proton is made of two up quarks and one down quark while the neutron is made of one up quark and two down quarks.

 

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of CERN is so-called because it was designed to smash together hadrons at very high speed. And also because it’s very large, as far as lab equipment go – it is found in a more or less circular tunnel 27 kilometers in circumference!

 

May the Force Carriers be with You

There are four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetic, weak, and strong. According to the Standard Model, the three forces aside from gravity are mediated by particles called force carriers.

Photons are the force carriers of the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless particles that travel at the speed of light, which is not surprising given that photons are the particles of light; light is but a stream of photons. Photons are also responsible for making like charges repel and unlike charges to attract. This means that without photons, atoms won’t exist either, because photons are what keep the electron around the nucleus! Without photons, the universe will be a very dark place indeed.

The force carriers of the strong force are called gluons, so-called because they form the “glue” that tightly binds quarks to form hadrons. Like photons, gluons are also massless. Without gluons, protons and neutrons won’t exist.

The weak force, on the other hand, is mediated by heavy force carriers called the W and Z bosons. These particles are around 80-90 times heavier than protons. The obesity of these force carriers is the reason why the weak force, unlike the electromagnetic force, has a very short range. The weak force can only act across distances smaller than an atom. But exotic as it may sound, the weak force is in fact very important to life on Earth. The weak force is responsible for some forms of radioactivity without which our Sun wouldn’t shine and the Earth’s interior wouldn’t be a dynamic fluid.

Of the three forces of the Standard Model, the weak is the weakest and the strong is the strongest (like duh). Compared to the electromagnetic force, the weak force is a trillion times weaker while the strong force is a hundred times stronger.

 

The Punch Line

The Standard Model makes many now well-confirmed predictions about the behavior of the particles that make up our world, but there’s a catch: it seems to say that all the particles of the model (the six leptons, six quarks and the force carriers) have to be massless. Except for photons and gluons, which are indeed massless, this is clearly not the case. This is a problem of the theory. And it’s a major one, too.

This is where the Higgs boson comes to the Standard Model’s rescue. Higgs bosons provide a mechanism that imbues some particles with mass. This happens because Higgs bosons, which are everywhere in the universe, “couple” with some particles and thus supply them mass. The stronger the coupling of the Higgs bosons with a certain particle, the more massive that particle becomes. (Unfortunately, for people who want to lose weight really quickly, changing how you couple with Higgs bosons is not an option.)

In a universe without Higgs bosons, the Standard Model predicts that all particles will be massless and they will all zip across space at the speed of light. Since we find ourselves living in a universe where only photons and gluons can travel at the speed of light, then either Higgs bosons exist or the Standard Model is wrong after all. The discovery of the Higgs boson is therefore a major triumph of the Standard Model.

 

In Search of a New Standard

To date, the Standard Model is one of two best theories about the universe. However, it still has a lot of problems. For one, it does not say anything about gravity. For another, it goes haywire when combined with the other theory we have of the universe, General Relativity.

Gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces; it is literally weaker than weak. In fact, it is weaker than the weak force by a factor of 10^25 or a thousand million quadrillions! That is why in the world of tiny particles, gravity is negligible. Another problem with gravity is that the Standard Model says nothing about it. But it is the force that keeps you anchored to the Earth, the force that keeps the planets tethered to the Sun, and the force that herds stars into galaxies and galaxies into clusters. Gravity, weak as it may be, is a force to be reckoned with.

Our best theory for gravity is Einstein’s General Relativity, which explains that gravity is the curvature of space and time. General Relativity has passed all experimental and observational tests with flying colors. It powerfully explains the behavior of the universe as a whole from its earliest stages up to the present. But it is not friends with the Standard Model, something that bothers physicists to no end. This is especially bothersome given that the origin of our universe, the moments approaching the Big Bang, is subject to both the laws of General Relativity and the Standard Model.

Another problem with the Standard Model is that it accounts for only 4% of the universe! As for the other 96%, it has nothing to say. In fact, the other 96% is so mysterious to us that we decided to simply call them “dark matter” and “dark energy,” which just goes to show that we know next to nothing about them, except that they exist. (IMHO, calling the other 96% “love” would have been apt.)

 

The Search Goes On

Let us summarize what we have talked about. The Standard Model is our best theory about the composition of our universe. It tells us that the universe is composed of six leptons that can fly around freely (like electrons and neutrinos), six quarks that are always glued to other quarks (protons and neutrons are just quarks glued together), and force carriers that mediate the interactions between the other particles. But the Standard Model can only account for the mass of some of the particles if a particle known as the Higgs boson exists. If the particle detected last week was a Higgs boson, it would be a major triumph for the Standard Model.

However, it is apparent that the Standard Model cannot be the last say. It has its own problems, chief among these is that it cannot explain gravity, it is not compatible with our best theory explaining gravity, and it can account for only 4% of the universe. And so the search for the solution to the problem of existence has not ended. In fact, the discovery of the Higgs boson opens the door for more furious research; in other words, the search has only begun.

This is a continuation of the story of Amber the electron. Amber’s story is a very important one because it is also the story of physics, the study of the fundamental aspects of our universe. You may learn about the first part of this story by reading ‘Quantum Queries: Is Ours A Clockwork Universe?’

 

Down In Amber’s World

Last time, we saw that up here in the world of familiar objects — bouncing basketballs, falling apples, orbiting planets — the laws that govern our universe make it tick like clockwork. Down in the world of Amber the electron, things can seem very different. We must use a different set of rules to explain the behavior of Amber the electron and similarly small objects like protons, neutrinos, and positrons. These are the rules of quantum mechanics, and objects governed by these rules can be called “quantum objects”. Amber the electron is a quantum object.

Back to the questions that started this discussion: Where’s Amber? And how fast is she going? Where is she headed? There are two things we must know about Amber before we can reasonably answer these questions.

First, everything we can say about Amber is contained in what is known as her wave function. The wave function is represented by the Greek letter Ψ (psi). Basically, Ψ contains everything that we can say of Amber.

Second, Ψ can be determined using Schrödinger’s equation (named after the colorful German physicist Erwin Schrödinger).

Schrödinger’s equation plays the same role in quantum mechanics as Newton’s Second Law does in classical mechanics. Recall that if we know the location and velocity of Bouncy the ball now, we can use Newton’s Second Law to determine his location and velocity at any other time. Likewise, if we know Amber’s wave function Ψ at any given moment, then we can use Schrödinger’s equation to determine Ψ at any later or earlier time. In other words, the way the wave function changes over time is also deterministic.

But wait, where is Amber? And how fast is she going? Where is she headed? Where will we find her at some later time?

To answer these questions, we now turn to the crux of the matter and possibly the source of all the weirdness of quantum mechanics. We turn to the meaning of the wave function, Ψ. What is Ψ anyway and what does it tell us about Amber’s whereabouts and howabouts?

Well, scientists have discovered that Amber’s wave function determines her probability density. Amber’s probability density gives us the likelihood of finding her in some place. To illustrate what this all means, let us use the well-known example of the hydrogen atom.

Suppose Amber is the electron of an atom of hydrogen. We can use Schrödinger’s equation to determine Amber’s wave function Ψ. Once we have determined Ψ, we can then use it to determine Amber’s probability density. In the context of atoms, the probability density of the electron is also called its electron cloud. Why is it called an electron cloud? Well, just take a look at the picture below.

 

The picture shows one of Amber’s possible probability densities, one of her potential electron clouds. (For those who remember their high school chemistry, the electron cloud shown above is what chemists call the ‘1s orbital’.) The darker regions represent regions in space where one is relatively likely to find Amber. Meanwhile, the lighter regions are the regions where finding her is relatively improbable. Notice how Amber’s probability density is diffused throughout space. That is why it’s called an electron cloud– like a cloud, it is not a firm, rigid structure but is instead spread out. Below are more possible electron clouds for Amber. (Chemists call them the 2p, 3p and 3d orbitals, respectively.)

 

So, does this mean that Amber is spread out? Well, let us check via experiment. Let us consider again the original electron cloud above. This time, we label some of the points in space. Let’s label them points A, B, C and D. Even before we perform the experiment to determine the whereabouts of Amber, we already know that Amber is more likely to be found in A than in B and less likely to be found in C than in D. Also, Amber is equally likely to be found in A as in D.

However, scientist found that after performing the experiment, they find Amber in a definite location. Say, you perform an experiment and find that Amber is in B. Two questions naturally arise. First, why in B and not A, where she was more likely to be found? Second, does the result imply that Amber was in B all along?

To answer the first question, we note that quantum mechanics is different from classical mechanics in being probabilistic instead of deterministic. In other words, quantum mechanics is about probabilities or likelihood. And in probabilities, an improbable event is still possible and can therefore happen, while a probable event does not have to occur. For example, when you throw a pair of dice, getting a 7 is a likely outcome while getting snake eyes is unlikely. However, when you throw a pair of dice, it is still possible, although unlikely, to get snake eyes instead of a 7. The probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics is what inspired Einstein to compare it to God playing dice with the universe.

 

Now it’s time to tackle the second and thornier question: If we perform an experiment to locate Amber and, as a result, find her in B, doesn’t that mean she was in B all along? There are three main answers to this question, and they represent the three main interpretations of quantum mechanics. They can be stated as follows:

1. The realist position says that Amber was in B all along. However, quantum mechanics was not able to tell us this. After all, quantum mechanics says that everything that can be said of Amber is already in Ψ. However, Ψ did not really tell us where we will find Amber, it merely gave us probabilities. Quantum mechanics is therefore incomplete – it does not give us a complete picture of reality. People subscribing to the realist position believe we need to discover what are known as hidden variables. Once these hidden variables are discovered, we can determine that Amber was indeed in B all this time.

2. The Copenhagen interpretation says that before the experiment, Amber was not in B, nor was she in A, C, D or in some other location. This interpretation tells us that her wave function gives us all we can know about her. This has a very interesting implication: if Amber was not in any place before the search, and was found to be somewhere after the search, that means that the act of looking for her somehow forced her to be somewhere! In the case of our example, that somewhere simply happened to be B, but it could have been A, C, D or some other location.

3. The agnostic position is to be silent about the whole matter. After all, who are we to say where Amber was before we actually searched for her? And it doesn’t matter whether you take the realist or Copenhagen interpretations because the equations of quantum mechanics give you the correct probabilities anyway.

After decades of furious research, many working physicists find themselves subscribing to the Copenhagen interpretation. (The Copenhagen interpretation got its name from the city of Niels Bohr, one of its main proponents.) And, surprisingly, the agnostic position is already eliminated by a relatively recently discovered theorem known as Bell’s theorem. Bell’s theorem basically says that it does make an observable difference whether Amber was in B all along or whether she was nowhere.  Also, very few working scientists are still hoping to find the hidden variables required by the realist position.

There are, in fact, other interpretations of quantum mechanics currently being considered by scientists. One of the more interesting of them is the many worlds interpretation.

4. The many worlds interpretation (MWI) says that all possible outcomes (finding Amber in A, B, C, D and all other possible locations) actually happen, but in different worlds! According to the MWI, what is objectively true is the Universe (with a capital U); it is where you find Amber’s electron cloud. When you try to look for Amber, the many worlds of the Universe decohere; that is, they get distinguished from each other. In one of those worlds, you find Amber in B, and in that world, she was in B all along. In another of those worlds, you find her in A, and in that world, she was in A even before you searched for her. And so it goes for the other possible outcomes (finding Amber in C, D, ect.).

If you are starting to find Amber’s world weird, know that this is only the tip of the iceberg. The world of Amber and her fellow quantum particles is governed by randomness. It is the opposite of the clockwork universe of classical physics.

 

Quantum vs. Classical

Now, one might think it strange that there are different rules governing the universe at different scales, classical mechanics for big things and quantum mechanics for very small things. How does one decide how big is big, anyway? Or how small should a thing be for it to be ruled by quantum mechanics? The truth is, according to the best scientific evidence we currently have, quantum mechanics governs the behavior of everything. Even Bouncy the basketball is governed by quantum mechanics! After all, Bouncy is also made of electrons, protons and neutrons, which are all quantum objects. Everything around us is made of quantum objects! However, for objects the size of Bouncy, classical mechanics is a good enough approximation. In fact, it is a superb approximation, to the point that we could use classical mechanics to predict Bouncy’s behavior without fear of being wrong. In other words, classical mechanics is an excellent estimate of quantum mechanics that is appropriate in the world of everyday objects. In the scale of things we see and touch, the weirdness that quantum mechanics displays on the small scale disappears.

Given these statements, this article is therefore about the fundamental rules that govern the behavior of everything around and within us. Ours is a quantum universe, and God does indeed throw dice on us all.

Up Next on Quantum Queries:

• What is the deal with Schrödinger’s cat?
• What is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle all about?
• What is a ‘quantum’ of anything?
• Why did Einstein find quantum mechanics so repulsive?
• What is tunneling and how will it render Moore’s law obsolete?
• What is entanglement and how is it related to teleportation?
• Can we test the truth of the many worlds interpretation?

Quelling Quantum Quackery

Along with ‘energy’ and ‘vibration’, the word ‘quantum’ is one of those scientific terms most dear to charlatans. Furthermore, quantum mechanics itself is home to terms and concepts that are easy target to quacks who like to sound scientific. Here’s a sampler of commonly abused words and concepts: entanglement, coherence and decoherence, the uncertainty principle, the many worlds, Schrödinger’s cat, action-at-a-distance, and quantum teleportation.

The ease at which impostors can abuse the terms and concepts of quantum mechanics cannot be blamed on one thing only. However, there is one factor that looms above the rest, and this is the lack of public understanding of quantum mechanics. In fact, one could say that it is a lack of understanding of physics, or worse, the lack of understanding of science as a whole!

This  is why I have decided to start the series ‘Quantum Queries’.  Through this series of articles, I would like to introduce the uninitiated but interested netizen to the amazing world of quantum mechanics. In this series we would tackle — in a way that I hope is entertaining and enlightening — some of the most vexing questions that surround the workings of the world around us. Below is a sample of some of the quantum queries that we will try to answer in this series:

• What is the deal with Schrödinger’s cat?
• What is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle all about?
• Is the many worlds theory true? And if it is, where are all these other worlds?
• What is quantum entanglement? And can it really be used for teleportation?

My hope is that this series will give its readers the skill to discriminate between genuine quantum physics and quantum baloney. What follows is the first article in this series. Enjoy!

 

The Quantum and the Classical

Meet Amber. She is an electron. Amber masses 9.11×10^-31 kilograms, a mass that makes “featherweight” sound really heavy. (Amber’s mass in decimal form is 0.000000000000000000000000000911 grams!)

Where’s Amber? Also, how fast is she going and where is she headed? Where can we find her later?

Well, answering these questions is not as easy as it sounds. This is because Amber’s behavior is governed by the rules of quantum mechanics, which are quite different from the rules that govern the behavior of familiar objects like falling apples, swinging pendulums or flying cannon balls. The objects familiar to us through everyday experience are governed by the rules of classical mechanics, discovered in the 17^th century by Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton.

How different are the rules governing Amber’s behavior from the rules governing the behavior of, say, a basketball? And where in the world is Amber? To answer these and related questions, let us first review the physics behind the behavior of everyday objects. Let us begin with the classics.

 

Back to the Classics

Meet Bouncy the basketball. Bouncy masses 145 grams. Scientists have discovered that they can describe Bouncy’s behavior using the rules of classical mechanics. When you hear physicists say, “Bouncy behaves classically,” this is what they mean.

So, where’s Bouncy? Also, how fast is he going and where is he headed? There are two things about Bouncy that are relevant in answering these questions. 

First, classical mechanics tells us that at any given moment, we can narrow down the range of Bouncy’s possible locations and speed as much as we want. For instance, it is possible that you at first only know that Bouncy is within Quezon Cityand has a speed somewhere between 1 kph and 4 kph. However, you can always find a way to narrow these ranges so that, after some investigation, you know that Bouncy is in the basketball court of the Araneta Coliseum and is going somewhere between 1.5 kph and 2.5 kph. Finally, it is possible that further investigation will lead you to conclude that Bouncy is, in fact, in the hands of PBA point guard LA Tenorio, and has a speed of 2.00 kph directed 45° from the horizontal. No one could blame you if you say that you have determined exactly where and how fast Bouncy was at that moment – there is practically zero uncertainty in Bouncy’s location and velocity. If you’re wondering how you could’ve known where and how fast bouncy was at a given moment, just imagine watching a replay of a PBA game. By analyzing the video, you can determine Bouncy’s location and velocity at any moment during the game. (For those who forgot their high school physics, velocity is just speed plus the direction.)

Second, classical mechanics allows us to predict where and how fast Bouncy will be at some later time. You can do this by using Bouncy’s classical equation of motion. An equation of motion is an equation that describes, well, the motion of an object. In classical mechanics, the equation of motion, also known as Newton’s Second Law, can be written as follows:

So let’s review what’s been said of Bouncy so far. First, we can be more or less certain of Bouncy’s location and velocity at any given moment. Second, if we know Bouncy’s location and velocity now, then we can use Newton’s Second Law to know his location and velocity in the future.

For example, consider the case where LA Tenorio is attempting a shot and Bouncy leaves his hands at the speed of 2.00 kph, projected at an angle of 45°.

Calculations using Newton’s Second Law will allow you to predict, up to a very high precision, where and how fast Bouncy will be after he leaves Tenorio’s hand. This means that you can forecast whether or not Tenorio will make the shot. Of course you can only do it if you are very fast in calculating. A supercomputer watching the basketball game could perform such überfast computation.

Since it is possible to determine and predict the precise location and velocity of everyday objects like Bouncy, classical mechanics is described as deterministic. Note that classical mechanics does not limit you to calculating Bouncy’s future location and velocity; you can also calculate Bouncy’s previous location and velocity. In other words, if you have enough computing capacity and knowledge of the present situation, you can know the location and velocity of classical objects like Bouncy for all time in the history of the universe!

 

But the following question will naturally arise in the curious reader’s head: How do we know thatNewton’s Second Law is to be trusted? How do we know that the whole of classical mechanics is correct? As always in science, the ultimate test of correctness is agreement with observation. And hundreds of years of observation have confirmed the accuracy of classical mechanics in describing the behavior of objects ranging from basketballs, cannonballs, and rockets to things the size of planets and stars.

In fact, for centuries the planets and stars themselves became the paragons of Newtonian physics’ sober splendor. The astounding predictability of the dance of the planets made the image of a clockwork universe indelible in the minds of generations of scientists.

 

One cannot therefore blame scientists for initially thinking that electrons like Amber will also behave like Bouncy and other classical objects, and that the universe will appear to tick like a grandfather clock at all scales. However, the shocking discoveries of the early 20^th century revealed to us that in the strange world of Amber and her fellow quantum objects, the clockwork dreams of classical physicists are regularly blown to smithereens.

 

Up Next on Quantum Queries:

• So, where is Amber?
• What is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle all about?
• What is the wave function?
• What does the many worlds theory tell us about our Universe?

The Talented Mr. Turing

If you are reading this from a computer, then you should thank the guy below.

His name is Alan Turing, and this 23^rd of June marks the 100^thanniversary of his birth. Turing was instrumental in the development of the modern theory of computation that serves as the basis for modern computer technology. He also laid down the foundations for the field of artificial intelligence. During the Second World War, Turing was also a critical figure in cracking the Enigma codeof the Nazis. Basically, he was both genius and war hero.

Despite these, when he admitted to being a practicing homosexual after the war, the British police had him punished for the “gross indecency”, a crime that is punishable either by imprisonment or chemical castration. Some historians believe his persecution to be one of the causes of his early death, a death that is to this day as laced in mystery as it is in cyanide.

It is indeed troubling that it was only less than a century ago that a law existed in Britain that criminalized homosexuality. What is more troubling is the fact that to this very day, similar laws persist in some parts of the world. Even in parts of the world where the law has moved past bigotry against homosexuality, there are still people who believe that Turing deserved his fate or that, at the very least, homosexuals like Turing do not deserve equal rights.

However, since it is Alan Turing’s 100^th birthday, it would be more appropriate if we discuss things on a note of hope. After all, Turing himself lived his life with his head ever held high.

Alan Turing was among the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. His talent revealed itself from a very early age. However, his was not simply a genius (he was elected to a fellowship at King’s College at the age of 23) but also a powerful character. For example, on his first day of school at the Sherborne School in Dorset, he discovered that there was a general strike, which meant that all means of public transportation was cut off.

Although his house was more than 96 kilometers away from Dorset, this did not stop him, and he bicycled his way to school. He was only 14 years old then! It’s a small wonder that he grew up to be a world-class marathon runner, almost qualifying for the British Olympic team in 1948.

What set him apart from previous major thinkers was his way of attacking problems, which represented a fundamental shift in perspective. In this regard, Turing was the Galileo of the previous century.

Before Galileo, physics was grounded by the insistence that the workings of the natural world can be divined purely by rational thought; most of pre-Galilean physics was armchair physics. Galileo showed us once and for all that the scientific method the two Bacons (Francis and Roger before him) talked about was a creative mix of logical reasoning and careful experimentation and/or observation.

One of Turing’s lasting contributions to scientific thought, to me, was his restating in a very practical and testable way many problems that have been previously regarded only in the abstract. Let me give just two of the many possible examples to illustrate this point. First, we consider Turing machines and second, we consider the Turing test. (For those who are more interested in Turing’s life than in his contributions, you may skip the next two sections without loss of appreciation for the succeeding ones.)

 

Turing Machines

Let us start with a fellow named Bertrand Russell. Aside from sex, sets and classes were old Bertie’s lasting interests. A class is basically a collection of objects with similar properties. In one of his studies, old Bertie analyzed the properties of what he called the “set of all sets” and the “class of all classes”.  This led him to the now famous Russell’s paradox. What is Russell’s paradox? Consider the class of all classes that do not belong to themselves. Does this class belong to itself? Mind effing, right?

Now, to avoid Russell’s paradox, some mathematicians and philosophers have resolved to be strict in their definition of sets and classes. They decided to call a collection of objects a set if and only if there is a clear-cut way of constructing it from scratch. This led them to restrict the number of rules one can use in arithmetic. And then along came Kurt Gödel who said that, roughly, such a restricted set of rules (what mathematicians and philosophers call a formal system) does not have the power to prove all true statements in arithmetic. He said this in his now famous Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. In other words, the incompleteness theorems imply that there are true statements in arithmetic that any formal system cannot prove.

All these are pretty abstract stuff. Enter Alan Turing and his Turing machines. Turing machines are abstract devices that can solve certain problems of arithmetic. Turing described the minimal requirements of his machine as follows: you have a very long (think infinitely long) strip of paper divided into cells, where each cell can contain a ‘0’ or a ‘1’, and a reader-writer that can read the content of each cell and print out a 0 or a 1 on an empty cell or replace the digit on a non-empty cell. However, since we have the benefit of computers, we can now think of Turing machines as simply idealized computer programs for solving specific problems.

Turing machines (think computer programs) are very important in mathematics and philosophy because they can be used to construct sets, which was the dream of philosophers and mathematicians. How? Think of the ‘0’ as a ‘no’ and the ‘1’ as a ‘yes’. If you want to construct the set of odd numbers starting from 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on, a Turing machine will give you the output 01010101…, meaning “No, zero is not an odd number; yes one an odd number; no; yes; no; yes; …”

Now for Turing’s punch line: you cannot find a Turing machine that can determine whether another Turing machine can solve a problem in a finite period of time or not. The problem with some Turing machines, you see, is that it can take them an infinite amount of time to solve a problem – in short, they can’t solve it. But how do we know whether a Turing machine can solve a problem or not? Perhaps we can build another Turing machine to tell us “Yes, this Turing machine can solve it” or “No, this bloke of a machine cannot.”

Alan Turing showed the world that we cannot have such a machine. For the sharp reader, you could see that this is intimately related to what Gödel said. Only, instead of being stated in a very abstract way, Turing placed it on firmer ground by giving us the image of Turing machines.

 

The Turing Test

Another example of Alan’s powerful insight is his restating the problem of intelligence, particularly the problem of artificial intelligence, in terms of what is now known as the Turing test.

To put things into context, note that Turing was very intellectually promiscuous. (Yes, it can have two meanings, and in the case of Turing both meanings apply.) He did not really care what “field” a certain study was in. If he was interested in it, he studied it. And so while studying math and philosophy (although he never considered himself a philosopher), he also studied computer science and artificial intelligence. His papers on computability laid the foundations of modern computer science.

He was also acutely interested in the very philosophical problem of intelligence. Some of the questions he wrestled with were, “What is intelligence? Can we ever build a machine that can ‘think’? How can we build a brain? How do humans understand anything?” However, Turing found these questions too vague and ill-posed. To formulate them in a way that is amenable to scientific scrutiny, he devised the Turing test.

Here’s how the Turing test goes. Our cast of characters contains three individuals: Person A, Person X, and Machine Z. Place each of these characters in an isolated room so that they cannot “see” each other. Connect Person X and Machine Z to Person A via a network. (Think the internet; imagine they are chatting via Skype or, if you are old school, via MIRC.) Person A then asks certain questions to Person X and Machine Z via the network. Turing said that we can conclude that Machine Z has artificial intelligence if Person A cannot decide with certainty which of his interlocutors is man and which is machine.

Philosophers, being people who have nothing better to do, are still arguing about the validity of the Turing test. But one can easily see that Turing’s take on the problem of artificial intelligence was a gargantuan improvement on previous attempts.

 

Turing’s Bombe

History will always remember Alan Turing as one of the critical figures in the British success in deciphering the Enigma code of the Nazis. During the Second World War, the Nazis used a machine called the Enigma machine to encipher the codes they used in wartime communication (such as communications between German U-boats). As one can easily see, figuring out what the Nazis were talking about is important in anticipating their next move and therefore beating them. During the war, Turing applied his genius to the problem of breaking the Nazi cipher. To do this, he invented and helped in constructing several deciphering machines; chief among these is what is now known as the Bombe.

 

The Passion of Turing

If you think that for all his achievements, Turing would be celebrated as a pride of the British people, then you’re wrong. Some time after the war, a burglary forced Turing to admit to the police that he engaged in homosexual activities, which simply means that he was enjoying himself. Apparently, many forms of enjoying oneself were illegal in 1952 Britain. For being a sexually active gay guy, Turing was convicted of ‘gross indecency’. And indeed, under the law of the time, homosexual acts were illegal in Britain. (Such unjust laws persisted in many parts of the Western world well into the twentieth century.)

For his “crime”, the police asked Turing to choose between imprisonment and “chemical castration”. He chose the latter; this involved being injected with estrogens that were supposed to lower his libido.

However, instead of being dejected, Turing continued to be a strong-willed individual, diligently carrying on with his many researches for about two years up until his death in 1954. Police investigations revealed that Turing poisoned himself with cyanide. However, some, including Turing’s mother, claimed that he was accidentally poisoned due to his own carelessness with chemicals. (Chemistry was one of Turing’s many obsessions.) This claim was spurred by the fact that a bitten apple was found near the site of Turing’s death. The police, however, never tested the said apple for cyanide.

 

Turing’s Lessons

Alan Turing’s rich and colorful life is something we should all learn from. I believe we should all try to embody his rarely-equaled passion for learning and his voracious appetite for understanding new things. His strong-willed reaction to his persecution for being gay should also be inspiration to those who continue to fight against laws and societies that attempt to repress and suppress diversity.

During the previous years, many people have urged the British government to issue a formal public apology for the treatment of Turing after the war. However, Lord McNally’s reaction to such calls seems, to me, to be most appropriate:

A posthumous pardon was not considered appropriate as Alan Turing was properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offence. He would have known that his offence was against the law and that he would be prosecuted. It is tragic that Alan Turing was convicted of an offence which now seems both cruel and absurd—particularly poignant given his outstanding contribution to the war effort. However, the law at the time required a prosecution and, as such, long-standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times.

That means that Turing knew that his battle was against an unjust law, and he fought it by being who he was and by being proud of it. I therefore believe that the appropriate way to celebrate Turing’s centenary is to celebrate his achievements and his strength as well as the achievements of the LGBT community throughout the decades following Turing’s death. The mere fact that even some opponents of equal rights find Turing’s conviction unjust is already worth a little celebration.

Here are a few of my humble suggestions on how to celebrate Turing’s 100^th birthday:

• Eat an apple (just be sure it’s not laced with cyanide)
• Learn something totally new
• Learn more about computers
• Wear something colorful
• Share the story of Alan Turing to a friend who has not heard about him

Beauty and Beast

And art thou, then, a world like ours,

Flung from the orb that whirled our own

A molten pebble from its zone?

How must the burning sands absorb

The fire-waves of the blazing orb,

Thy chain so short, thy path so near

Thy flame-defying creatures hear

The maelstrom of the photosphere!

-   Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Flâneur

 

When, in 1882, Venus appeared to pass in front of the Sun’s disc in an event known as a transit, little was known of the planet, except perhaps that it was one of the brightest objects in the night sky (third only to the Sun and Moon) and that it was both the “morning star” and the “evening star”. Much about Venus, and even the Sun, was therefore left to the imagination, and this is what gave the doctor, poet, and amateur astronomer Oliver Wendell Holmes the liberty to write the preceding verse. As can be surmised from Holmes’s poem, which was inspired by his witnessing the 1882 transit of Venus, he imagined the planet – “a world like ours” – to be populated by “flame-defying creatures” who would be audience to the “maelstrom of the photosphere.”

To put Holmes’s romantic visualization of Venus in context, note that in 1882, space probes are yet to be sent to Venus. In fact, space exploration hasn’t begun then. (The world had to wait for nearly three quarters of a century for the first space probe.) The most intriguing aspect of Venus known to scientists at the time of the 1882 transit came from the poet and astronomer Mikhail Lomonosov who, in 1761, discovered that Venus had a substantial atmosphere. But even under the intense scrutiny of generations of starry-eyed telescope users, Venus refused to give up her secrets. Ironically, the same atmosphere that made Venus so alluring, and that made her the brightest object in a moonless night sky, also constantly veiled her from the prying eyes of astronomers. Since her cloud cover never parted, successions of space lovers were given the freedom to imagine what lies beneath Venus’s curtain of vapours. Thus Holmes’s The Flâneur.

Witnesses to this year’s transit of Venus do not have the freedom Holmes had. Such is the price of knowledge. But what we now know about the Earth’s “twin planet” is no tether to the imagination. In fact, as usual in science, reality has shown that our wildest imaginations are barely wild enough to match what’s really out there. After the fly-by mission of 18 space probes, and after 17 landings that lasted only for an hour at most, we now know that Venus is a real-world materialization of the medieval conception of hell; Venus is both beauty and beast. However, let us save the discussion of Venus’s peculiarities for another article. For the moment, let us turn our attention to that surreal meeting of worlds that is an astronomical transit.

 

Ingress and Egress

An astronomical transit occurs when one heavenly body appears to pass in front of another as viewed from a vantage point, usually the Earth. When the obscuring body covers most or all of the other celestial body, the event is called an occultation.

This Wednesday, June 6, people in the Philippines will have a chance to witness the transit of Venus with the Sun, an event similar to the one that inspired The Flâneur. The last transit of Venus with the Sun was in 2004, and the next will be in the year 2117, followed by another in 2125; transits of Venus with the Sun are rare events that occur in pairs separated by an 8-year gap.

During the transit, Venus will appear as a small dot moving across the disc of the Sun. For more details, see the Appendix of this article or visit the website of the Astronomical League of the Philippines. As viewed from the Philippines, the transit will happen from around 6:00 AM until a quarter to 1:00 PM. However, the precise timing of when the transit begins and ends is very sensitive to the location of the observer. It is for this reason that transits were very important to astronomers. By noting their exact location on Earth, determining the exact timing of the start and end of a transit, and comparing their recorded times with that recorded by other observers, astronomers were able to get a first guess at the distances between the planets and therefore comprehend the nearly incomprehensible scale of the Solar System. (For more on the scale of the Solar System, see this article.)

Another reason why transits are very important is that they help us find extrasolar planets. Extrasolar planets are planets that orbit a star other than our Sun. (Some extrasolar planets do not orbit any star at all, but rather float alone in the cold of interstellar space like a homeless orphan.)  How do astronomers use transits to find extrasolar planets? What they do is measure the brightness of a certain star as detected from Earth. For many stars, the level of brightness is fairly constant. However, for some stars a brief period of slight decrease in brightness is detected at regular intervals. This brief dimming can be caused by an orbiting planet undergoing a transit across its mother star.

Even the brightness of the Sun as measured from the Earth’s surface will decrease by a very tiny bit during the transit of Venus, as Venus is partially blocking the rays falling into Earth. The decrease in the Sun’s brightness, however, is very small because Venus is very small compared to the Sun.

So transits of Venus are important and rare astronomical events. Of course many of us want to witness this occurrence, which is why we now discuss the ways of viewing the transit safely.

 

Viewing the Transit

There are several ways to view this year’s transit safely. The easiest way would be to buy glasses with solar filters. Such glasses are also called eclipse glasses because they also allow you to view solar eclipses without damaging your eyes. Another material that can be used, according to the Astronomical League of the Philippines, is a welder’s glass graded #14.  A word of caution: do not look through materials of questionable quality. When you have old solar filters or welder’s glass that are scratched or had their quality compromised in any way, do not use them. If you are in doubt about the ability of a material to protect your eyes, do not look through it. Finally, do not buy “eclipse glasses” from people who do not know their astronomy. The transit of Venus is a must see, but you do not want it to be the last thing you’ll view.

Another way to view the transit is through a pinhole projector. The simplest way of making a pinhole projector is to get two sheets of paper. (Yes, it can be as simple as that!) One sheet of paper will have the pinhole, a small hole measuring around 1-2 millimetres in diameter. The other sheet of paper is where you will project an image of the Sun. To project an image unto the second screen, orient the first screen such that the Sun’s rays hit it directly (that is, so that the rays are perpendicular to it). Next, place the second screen behind the first. So that you could see the projection on the second screen, place it in a dark place. Adjust the distance of the second screen until you obtain the sharpest projection. Below is my pathetic attempt to illustrate the simplest kind of pinhole projector.

Another, slightly more sophisticated way of making a pinhole projector is to make a long tube (which can be made of cardboard or some other material). Both ends of the tube are covered. However, one end will have a pinhole (1-2 mm) punctured into it. To view the projection at the other end, make a window large enough for you to see the projection. Longer tubes are better. Lengths usually suggested are 6 feet and 1 meter. Below is an illustration of the tube projector.

A third way of viewing the transit is by projecting a magnified image of the Sun. For this you’ll need a telescope (either a monocular or a binocular), a projection screen as usual, and simple cover to cast a shadow unto the projection screen. By directed the telescope towards the Sun, a magnified image of the Sun is projected onto the screen. To see this dim projection, use the cover to cast a shadow unto the screen. Below is an illustration.

 

Happy Viewing!

Given the historical significance and rarity of the transits of Venus, I am sure many of you would want to witness this year’s transit for yourself. Just remember, your eyes’s health must still be top priority.

And who knows, your witnessing the 2012 transit might inspire you to pen down your own verse in the same way that Oliver Wendell Holmes was inspired by the 1882 transit.

 

 

* * *

Appendix

There are four important events in a transit, and astronomers have special names for them. First comes what is called first contact (or ingress I), when the disc of Venus as seen from the Earth first makes contact with the disc of the Sun. In the Philippines, this will happen at around 6 in the morning. Next comes what is called second contact (ingress II), when Venus is, for the first time, totally within the yellow orb of the Sun. Second contact will come about 27 minutes after first contact. At around 12:30 at noon comes third contact (egress I), when the black dot that is Venus begins to leave the Sun’s face, a process that will be completed come fourth contact (egress II), around 18 minutes after third contact. The precise timing of these events was used by previous generations of astronomers to determine the scale of the Solar System.

Also, here’s a link to the live stream of the transit.

The Biggest Sucker

So, do you want to suck big time? What I mean is, do you want to be a black hole? You’re in luck, because this guide will teach you some of the basic tricks on how to be one of the biggest suckers in the universe!

But before we turn our attention to actually becoming a black hole, let us first start with the fundamentals. Let’s begin by talking about what two blokes named Newton and Einstein said about this thing called ‘gravity’.

 

Why I Am Attracted To You

Legend tells us that a fellow named Isaac Newton was inspired to formulate his theory of gravity when he saw an apple falling (not very far) from the tree. The truth of this story is not that important; what’s important is that Newton’s supposed observation made him realize that the same force that made the apple fall towards the ground also made the Moon go around the Earth! In fact, this is the same force that keeps the planets in orbit around the Sun, and that keeps the Sun and all the other stars of the Milky Way Galaxy in orbit around the galactic center (which is probably home to a gigantic black hole, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves).

As a matter of fact, Newton said that everything in the universe that has mass pulls towards it every other thing that has mass. In short, everything with mass attracts everything else with mass! This means that I am attracted to you, gravitationally speaking. After all, you and I both have mass. And yes, you are attracted to me too (gravitationally, of course, and perhaps otherwise). And yes, there’s also mutual (gravitational) attraction between myself and this nearby bottle of wine, and between myself and the binary star Sirius 8.3 light years away.

Yes, I know, Newton’s idea sounds loony, to say the least. But, like most crazy-sounding ideas in physics, it comes with an equation that has proven effective for centuries. This equation is:

 F = (G *m_­A*m_B)÷d²

Here, F stands for the strength of the gravitational attraction between two objects A and B. On the other side of the equation, m_A stands for the mass of A while m_B stands for the mass of B; d stands for the distance between A and B and, finally, G is a number called the universal gravitational constant. We’ll get back to G later. For now, what’s important is that the equation above was proven true for hundreds of years after Newton wrote it down. More importantly, Newton’s simple equation explained so many different things, like why gravity is weaker on the Moon than on Earth, why the planets move around the Sun in elliptical orbits, and why angry birds shot from a sling follow a parabolic path.

But then the question arises: why don’t we feel our mutual (gravitational) attraction? If you have mass and I have mass and what Newton said is true, then where’s the love? The explanation lies with the number G in the equation above. The thing about G is that it’s a pretty small number. As a matter of fact, it is given by

G = 0.00000000006673 N m²/kg²,

which is miniscule indeed. Because G is so small, the strength of gravitational attraction between everyday things and between ordinary people (i.e. people aside from yo mama) is negligible. Let me give a specific example to illustrate this point. Say, person A has a mass of 50 kg and person B, who stands 1.0 meters away, has a mass of 60 kg. According to Newton’s equation above, the force of (gravitational) attraction between A and B is given by

 F = ( 0.00000000006673 N m²/kg²)*(50 kg)*(60 kg)÷(1.0 m)²

With a little help from a scientific calculator, the answer comes out to be around 0.0000002 newtons. (‘Newton’ is the measure of force in the same way that ‘meter’ is the measure of length.) An ant’s bite is many, many times stronger than 0.0000002 newtons.

To feel the strength of gravity, you need a really massive object like the Earth. For example, a person with mass 60 kg is attracted to the Earth with a force of around 600 newtons. If you want to know just how strong 600 newtons is, try lifting a 60-kg person.

Newton’s equation for the strength of gravity stands as one of the greatest achievements of any human mind. But there’s a tiny problem with Newton’s theory of gravity. Although it knows how gravity behaves, it doesn’t explain why there’s gravity at all. Why should everything with mass attract every other thing with mass? Why should the Earth pull us towards it? To these questions, Newton’s theory had no answer. We had to wait for some other bloke named Albert Einstein to supply us the answer.

 

Messy Hair, Neat Mind

Nearly two hundred years after Newton’s revolutionary theory of gravity, a Swiss patent clerk named Albert Einstein made the equally revolutionary theory that basically states that space and time should not be treated as distinct entities but should be united in an entity called ‘spacetime’. This theory is called the special theory of relativity, and it is where the world’s most famous equation, E = mc², comes from. What Einstein’s famous equation basically says is that mass (m) can be converted to energy (E). The quantity c is the speed of light, which is a little more than 1 billion kilometers per hour (nearly 300 million meters per second).

Central to special relativity, as the theory is also called, is the fact that nothing with mass can travel through space faster than the speed of light. In other words, the speed of light is the speed limit of the universe. Only light can go as fast as 1 billion kph, and no signal can go faster.

However, Einstein has not yet solved the riddle of gravity in his special theory of relativity. He had to struggle for 10 more years before he finally come up with his general theory of relativity, which stands as one of the finest products of human thought. In general relativity, as it is also called, Einstein explained that gravity is the curvature of space and time (that is, of spacetime). Massive objects, Einstein explains, warp the fabric of space and time around them, and this warping is what we observe and experience as gravity. So yes, spacetime has curves too, and everyone is attracted to these.

The example is best illustrated by imagining a horizontally flat bed sheet that is held tout. Think of this bed sheet as the fabric of spacetime. When it is empty, spacetime is flat. When you place small things on this flat fabric, they stay where they are – there is no gravity. Next, imagine placing a bowling ball on the fabric. Notice how the bowling ball changes the shape of the fabric so that now, if you place small things on the fabric, they ‘gravitate’ towards the bowling ball – the bowling ball pulls the small objects toward it, which is basically what gravity is all about!

 

Now, Off To Black Holes!

Now that we know what gravity is (it’s the curvature of spacetime) and that it gets stronger as objects become more massive, we are almost ready to study the requirements that we must pass to become a full fledged black hole. But before we do, let us first look at some of the distinguishing characteristics of black holes.

When one fellow going by the name Karl Schwarzschild tried to solve Einstein’s equations, he noted that one solution described an object with very peculiar properties. One of the more amazing properties of this object is that it had a gravitational force so strong you need to travel faster than light just to escape its pull. But remember that nothing can go faster than light. Not even light could go faster than light! This means that when something gets too close to this object, they get sucked in and there is no escaping. Not even light can escape it! For this reason, such hypothetical object came to be called ‘black holes’. They’re called ‘black’ because they suck even light. And they are the universe’s biggest suckers! They suck everything from subatomic particles to stars.

 

The Standard Procedure

We are now ready to answer the question: how does one become a black hole? Well, here’s how.

 

1. Be a star. And don’t be just any star, but be a really massive one. A star like our Sun won’t do. To be safe, be a star that is around 20 times more massive than our Sun.

 

2. Die. Living stars are happily glowing orbs of plasma. That’s not what we want to be. We want to be black holes, and to be one you must be a dead star.

 

3. Furthermore, aspiring black holes like ourselves must follow the proper procedures when dying, which are listed as follows:

a. When you’re old, be a red supergiant. Red supergiants are among the biggest stars in the universe.

b. After becoming a supergiant, be a supernova. Supernovae are really bright explosions; they occur when a massive star reaches the end of its life. How many stars are there in a typical galaxy? Around billions. Even if you combine the brightness of all of these stars, a supernova is brighter still.

c. Don’t be a neutron star. Many big stars retire to become neutron stars. But neutron stars don’t suck. Instead, they are just very dense (like most people). In fact, neutron stars can be so dense that a glass full of neutron star can be heavier than a skyscraper!

d. If you followed procedures a, b and c when dying, then congratulations, you are now a black hole! Go suck away at the universe.

 

The Short Cut

Let’s face it, not all of us can be stars. Luckily, there’s a short cut one can follow to be a black hole. Even better, it can be expressed in one sentence.

Be very, very dense.

But recall that density is a measure of how compact an object is. To be dense is to have a lot of mass packed in a very small volume. Mathematically, density is mass divided by volume.

To be as dense as a black hole, you must do either of the following:

1. Be really massive. However, you must do this without getting bigger. If you gain as much volume as mass, that won’t increase your density. How massive? If you are a person 5’ 7” tall, you must increase your mass to 1.6 million billion billion kilograms. That’s about 27 times the mass of the Earth. Good luck with that!

 

2. Here’s another option: compress yourself to a very small ball. For a person who masses 55.0 kg, you’ll be a black hole if you are compressed to a ball of radius 0.000000000000000000000000082 meters. That’s actually a lot smaller than a hydrogen atom. Again, good luck with that.

 

3. The easiest way to be a black hole is to be massive and small at the same time. Consider the Earth. It’s a pretty massive thing, isn’t it? Well, to make it a black hole, you simply have to compress it to a ball with radius 8.8 millimeters. The radius 8.8 millimeters is called the Schwarzschild radius of the Earth. If you compress anything to a ball the size of its Schwarzschild radius, it becomes a singularity – in other words, a black hole. The Schwarzschild radius of a 55-kg person is 0.000000000000000000000000082 meters while that of the Sun is about 3 kilometers.

 

Additional Guidelines

Here are additional guidelines on how to be a happy, sucky black hole.

1. Rip space and time. Black holes are singularities. Singularities are regions in space and time where the curvature of spacetime becomes infinite. Using our fabric analogy earlier, black holes are regions where the fabric of space and time has a rip.

2. Don’t be naked. There is a hypothesis called ‘Cosmic Censorship’ that says that naked singularities don’t exist (with the possible exception of the Big Bang singularity, which partly explains its name). Singularities, according to this hypothesis, are always “concealed” by an event horizon, so that they are not visible to the rest of the universe. The event horizon of a black hole is the “surface of no return.” Since nothing that goes through the event horizon ever goes out, this means that anything that happens inside the event horizon will remain unknown to the rest of the universe.

 

3. Be hairless; black holes have no hair. What this means is that black holes have very few features. To describe a black hole, you just need to know its mass, its electric charge and how fast it rotates. If you have two black holes with the same mass, electric charge and speed of rotation, then you have no way to distinguish one from the other.

 

4. Be very disorderly. In physics, disorder is measured by a quantity called entropy. A very messy room has a high entropy while an organized room has low entropy. According to a principle called the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the entropy of an isolated system has a very strong tendency to increase with time. That is why you have to exert a lot of effort to keep you room neat and tidy but you don’t need to exert any effort at all to put it in disarray. Now, black holes are known to have very high entropy. As a matter of fact, they’re among the most disorderly things in the universe!

How do we know that black holes are very disorderly? It has something to do with the fact that disorderly systems are easy to describe. For example, how do you make a disorderly room? Just throw stuff around the place! How do you stack a random deck of cards? Just place any card on top of another without fussing which card is which. Orderly systems, on the other hand, are really difficult to describe. How do you fix a room to make it orderly? You have to put everything in its right place — the couch goes here, the table goes there, this painting is to be hanged here, and so on. How do you stack a deck where the cards arranged in increasing order? You have to put the aces first, then the ones next, then the twos after them, and so on.

Now, remember that black holes are hairless, which means that black holes are really easy to describe, which means they are very disorderly.

 

Happy Sucking!

So there, your very own guide to be a major sucker. I hope that helped a lot in your aspirations to be one of the universe’s most curious objects. Now it’s time for you to go away from me — I don’t want to be sucked in just yet.

 

Photo credits:

• ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu
• cse.ssl.berkeley.edu
• astronomynotes.com
• imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov
• eastpdxnews.com
• blogs-images.forbes.com

 “But It’ s The Solar System!”

In keeping with the spirit of Year of the Solar System, I am going to write about two of my latest obsessions in one post: the Solar System and the BBC series Sherlock.

Let me start by saying that I am a big fan of Sherlock. (And, in case you’re wondering: yes, the homoeroticism is one of my favorite aspects of the series.) After having said that, I will now proceed to criticize a view of science encouraged by Arthur Conan Doyle’s character. In other words, I am going to argue why Sherlock should give a damn about the Solar System.

In Doyle’s Sherlock novel A Study in Scarlet, Dr. John Watson was surprised to discover that Sherlock Holmes does not know, nor does he care, that the Earth revolves around the Sun. In Watson’s own words, Holmes’s knowledge about astronomy, among other things, was “next to nothing.” Holmes’s lack of knowledge about the Copernican theory is especially surprising given that he knows so much about things like the appearance of different kinds of cigar ash.

In the novel, Holmes defended his cluelessness about astronomy by likening his mind to an attic with limited space. He said that he couldn’t be bothered to remember useless trivia that have no relevance to his work as a detective. After all, knowing what different kinds of ash look like helped him solve a case, but knowing that the Sun is the center of the Solar System did not. In the BBC series, Sherlock’s defense went like this, “Oh hell, what does the solar system matter? So we go round the sun.  If we went round the moon or round and round the garden like a teddy bear it wouldn’t make any difference.  All that matters to me is the work. Without it my brain rots.”

To this, all that Watson could retort was, “But it’s the Solar System!” I wonder why this line by Watson is not as popular as it should be.

Given that Sherlock Holmes probably has Asperger syndrome (the BBC Sherlock describes himself to be a “high functioning sociopath”), maybe we can forgive him for knowing so many trivial things but not knowing that the Earth revolves around the Sun. This should not, however, be used by people who want an excuse for skipping out on their basic science.

More importantly, Sherlock’s apathy towards fundamental scientific concepts betrays a deep misunderstanding of the structure of science. Let us look at two of the most glaring deficiencies in Sherlock’s conception of science, which are (a) his unfamiliarity with the principle of consilience and (b) his lack of appreciation for the principle of parsimony.

Consilience

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines consilience as the “linking together of principles from different disciplines especially when forming a comprehensive theory.” The word has been around for some time now, although it recently regained currency thanks to E.O. Wilson’s wonderful book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998).

Although the dictionary definition is useful in its rigidity, I would like to use Wilson’s subtitle, ‘the unity of knowledge’, as my definition of consilience. Although this definition is rather vague, it’s just what I need to illustrate why Sherlock should give a damn about the Solar System.

I respect Sherlock’s view that one should not waste one’s brainpower on useless trivia. The basic concepts of science, however, are not useless trivia for the reason that there is a unity of knowledge in science. In other words, scientific theories cannot be treated in isolation of each other. If you do not understand how the Solar System behaves, then your understanding of gravity will be limited. If you have a limited grasp of how gravity works, then you easily end up believing a lot of wrong things, like how the positions of the planets at the time of your birth determine your destiny.

While a lot of scientific facts are better left to the specialists, there is a set of fundamental scientific concepts that every educated person should know because they are connected in countless ways to our daily life. Let’s call such scientific concepts keystone concepts. Keystone concepts are concepts one must comprehend in order to formulate a consistent theory of the world. And one needs a consistent theory of the world in order to make the correct decisions when necessary. (“Should I buy a cheap plot of land near the Marikina Fault Line?” “Are genetically modified crops bad for me?” “Should I vote for a politician who denies global warming?”)

The Copernican theory is a splendid example of a keystone concept. Sherlock, who is a detective, should know better that the Copernican theory is intimately linked with the theory of gravity, which in turn dictates how bullets behave when fired from the barrel of a gun; planetary astronomy, as it should be clear to anyone who understands science, cannot be separated from ballistics.

Other examples of keystone concepts in science are the atomic theory, the theory of evolution by natural selection and the germ theory of diseases.

What I find beautiful about scientific consilience is the fact that you do not need to memorize so many scientific facts in order to have a full grasp of the world around you. Like Sherlock, I believe that remembering so many facts that have no relevance to your life is wasteful and counterproductive. However, because there is consilience in science, knowing that the Earth goes round the Sun is not an isolated fact but should be part of a web knowledge that informs our view of the world.

Furthermore, consilience makes it easier to take in new facts because learning something new does not involve remembering it by rote. Rather, because of the unity of knowledge, new facts about the world can be easily incorporated into our worldview. Hence, knowing the keystone concepts of science such as the theory of evolution helps us save on brainpower rather than waste it. We can state this fact in another way: keystone concepts help us organize our knowledge in such a way that makes acquisition of new information easy. To use Holmes’s attic analogy in Scarlet, being familiar with the keystone concepts help us tidy up that attic that is our mind so that it becomes easier for us to decide which piece of information is truly useless and which is helpful.

As a matter of fact, in the BBC series, Watson gets the last laugh when Sherlock discovers that in order to solve the mystery, a little background knowledge on astronomy is helpful after all.

 

Parsimony

In dismissing the Copernican theory as useless trivia, Sherlock fails to grasp another principle of science called parsimony.

As it is usually presented, parsimony describes the simplicity of an explanation. The most parsimonious explanation is one that explains the most with the fewest assumptions. Closely linked with the principle of parsimony is the famous Occam’s razor. Occam’s razor says that in choosing between competing logically consistent explanations, one must choose the simplest explanation.

The parsimony I want to talk about in relation to Sherlock and the Solar System, however, is the simplicity that comes in accepting a scientific worldview.

The world around us is exploding with an almost endless parade of seemingly unrelated phenomena. However, if one has a scientific view of things, one discovers that beneath all this complexity is an underlying simplicity (a phrase I got from Jong Atmosfera).

Take the heliocentric model of the Solar System. In this model, the Sun is the center of the Solar System and the planets, along with asteroids and comets, revolve around it. This model of the Solar System beautifully, and simply, explains so many things that are relevant to our daily lives. For example, combined with the fact that the Earth’s axis is tilted, it explains why we have seasons. It also explains why we have tides, why our Moon has many phases, why the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and why a year is approximately 365 days long. Our knowledge of how the Earth goes round the Sun also helps us adjust our calendars accordingly so that we can better order our lives around the passage of the seasons.

On a more romantic but still scientific level, knowing how our Solar System is configured gives us clues to our origins, which in turn tell us a lot about who we are. It is our knowledge of our cosmic neighborhood that enabled us to surmise the fact that we are in truth made of stardust, and that we are products of more than 4 billion years of evolution on a lonely piece of rock that floats in the vastness of space. Far from being mere romantic knowledge, such realizations provide us with powerful insights into human nature. If natural selection operating on a bunch of stardust produced us, then what does that say of us? If we want to control our destiny as an individual and as a species, we must know the answer to this very important question.

And if Sherlock wants to read people like books, it would certainly help him to know where humans figure in the grand scheme of the cosmos.

 

Why You Should Give A Damn About The Solar System

Yes, you can live a full life without bothering to know the first thing about the Solar System. However, I hope I have convinced you that life is simply so much better knowing the Earth goes round the Sun. And it certainly is a lot less boring.

 

Photo credits:

• redbubble.com
• beyondhollywood.com
• theculture.org
• blog.naver.com
• savagechickens.com
• e-booksdictionary.com
• mariboccful.tumblr.com
• xiiiskies.tumblr.com
• ladskipdepiss.tumblr.com

Year of the Solar System

Happy Year of the Solar System! The planets are so happy to greet you they decided to move too close to each other just so that they could fit in a family portrait to show you. Also, so as not to dwarf their smaller siblings, the giants of the family had to move a lot farther from the camera.

Shown below is a more candid family portrait. Here, the planets are shown in their correct size relationships.

But how far are the planets with respect to each other? When I taught high school astronomy two years ago, I tried to draw a Solar System that’s to scale on our classroom’s white board. Good luck to me! I ended up either trying hard to include Jupiter in my drawing or attempting to carefully draw the crammed orbits of the inner planets just so that they’re distinguishable from each other. In the end, I used a number of steps to illustrate the relative distances of the planets to each other. (“If the Sun were here, then Mercury would be so and so paces away.”)

Before we go to the relative distances involved in our cosmic neighborhood, let us first have a word about the units we use to measure the Solar System.

 

Measuring the Solar System

The average distance of the Earth from the Sun is about 150 million kilometers. If you could fly to the Sun in a spacecraft that travels at three times the speed of sound, it would still take you more than 5 years to get there! So that we don’t have to be inconvenienced by humongous numbers in describing distances within the Solar System, astronomers invented the astronomical unit (AU). 1 astronomical unit is equal to 150 million kilometers, the average distance of the Earth from the Sun.

 

How Many Steps from the Sun?

Using the astronomical units, the distances of the planets from the Sun can be written in convenient, sizable numbers. These numbers are shown in the table below.

 

The second column is labeled average orbital radius because a planet’s average distance from the Sun is indeed the (average) radius of its orbit.

Now, let us make our mini Solar System. Imagine the Sun to be where you are right now. (Better yet, imagine you are the Sun.) If you take 4 steps from your current position, you’d get to where Mercury is. To get to Venus, you have to take 7 steps from where you are, while you need to take 10 steps to get to the Earth. Meanwhile, you need to take a good 15 steps to get to Mars’ obit. So far, so good.

But wait, notice that to get to Jupiter, you need to take no less than 52 steps! Jupiter, it turns out, is more than three times as far from the Sun (that’s you) as Mars is. Why is there so much empty space in between Mars and Jupiter?

Well, as most of us know, the space between Mars and Jupiter is far from empty. Rather, the space is populated by a swarm of rocks called the asteroid belt. Some of the asteroids are so large they are considered dwarf planets. Many scientists think that they are rock fragments that failed to coalesce into a planet during the Solar System’s formation because of the constant gravitational tug of neighboring Jupiter.

But don’t imagine the asteroid belt to be a densely clustered group of flying rocks. Although the asteroids number by the hundreds of thousands, there’s plenty of space for them to distribute themselves in.

Now let’s go back to our walk through of the Solar System. We learned that if the Earth is 10 paces from the Sun, then Jupiter is 52. Meanwhile, Saturn would be 96 paces from the Sun. Saturn is nearly ten times as far from the Sun as the Earth is! About twice as far out, at 192 paces, is Uranus. (No, I will not make a Uranus joke). Neptune, the farthest planet (yes, get over it), is 301 steps from the Sun.

As I am writing this, I am in a room whose biggest dimension is around a hundred steps (that’s “how far” Saturn is from the Sun). When I place textbook on one corner of this room (the “Sun corner”), I can hardly see it from the opposite corner (the “Saturn corner”). However, from the Sun corner, the positions of Mercury (4 steps), Venus (7 steps), Earth (10 steps) and Mars (15 steps) are literally within spitting distance. I highly doubt it if I can spit as far as the orbit of Jupiter (52 steps).

 

The Ends of the Solar System

Don’t worry, I did not forget about Pluto. Just because astronomers do not consider it a major planet anymore doesn’t mean I stopped loving it.

Before we “walk to” Pluto, let me first get this out: nothing “happened” to Pluto. No, it did not become a moon of Neptune. It did not even shrink. Above all, it did not become a star!

If you’re wondering why I had to say this, good for you. Many people – and I mean many – believe that something happened to Pluto to deserve its “demotion” from being a major planet to being a dwarf planet. And yes, some people think it became a star. (Well, in a sense, it became a ‘star’. But you know what I mean.)

I think the misunderstanding surrounding Pluto’s planethood (or stardom) reveals the natural human tendency to be essentialists. In other words, most people still think that to be a planet, one must have the essence of a planet – one must possess planetness. That truth, however, is that ‘planet’ is just another word for ‘biggish object orbiting a star’. In this case, the star is our Sun. And we get to decide how big is big. The problem with Pluto is not just that it’s really small, it’s that we found at least one other object orbiting the Sun that’s bigger than Pluto. That object is Eris, named after the goddess of discord and strife. Along with Pluto, Eris is part of the Kuiper Belt, a second belt of rocks orbiting the Sun. Most of the Kuiper Belt lies beyond the orbit of Neptune. Other members of the Kuiper Belt have names like Sedna, Xena (the warrior princess), Makemake and Haumea.

Now, let’s go back to our walk through. Recall that in our mini Solar System, you are the Sun. 10 steps away is the Earth, 52 steps is Jupiter and 301 steps is Neptune. Pluto is, on average, 395 steps from you. The Kuiper Belt starts at around 300 paces. To get to where Eris is, you have to walk 1,000 steps from where you are. If you think the Solar System ends there, then you couldn’t be more wrong. The Oort Cloud, a hypothetical body of rocks and comets, is no less than two thousand times farther from the Sun as the Earth is. That means that if the Earth is 10 steps from you, then the Oort Cloud is 20,000 steps away! Some astronomers even think that the heliopause, which could be thought of as the outer boundary of the Solar System, is no less than 500,000 steps away. The inner planets are indeed in the innermost part of the Solar System.

Sola!

That concludes our overview of the vast dimensions in our own cosmic neighborhood. I hope the “walk through” inspired you to make a mini Solar System in your own backyard. And I hope that the next time you look up to the heavens, you will see the grandeur that held thrall all the great minds throughout the ages.

 

Photo credits:

• www.nasa.gov
• www.solarsystem.nasa.gov
• www.universetoday.com
• www.wikipedia.org
• www.cosmographica.com
• www.theiamfamilyoflight.com

DepEd, Y U No Teach Science to Kids?

The news that our Department of Education decided to remove the ‘Science’ subject in the first and second grades released a flurry of criticism and commentary in the past two months. Since science education is one of the main advocacies of the Filipino Freethinkers, the issue was tackled in a couple of articles on this site. To read the articles, go here or here.

Now, if there’s one thing worse than DepEd’s dropping ‘Science’ in the first and second grades, then it is their reason for doing it. In the words of Education Secretary Br. Armin Luistro, they decided to jettison science in order to “decongest the Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) and to make learning more enjoyable to young learners.” In other words, they believe that in postponing the teaching of science, they are doing the students an act of kindness.

 

Science, the School Bully

That many people believe science is not “child friendly” is sad on so many levels. The other levels have already been excellently discussed in the other articles on this site. I want to concentrate on this one level in particular: DepEd and the Philippine public as a whole view science as a congestion because they do not understand the first thing about it.

Given how they view the subject, I am in fact happy that DepEd dropped ‘Science’ in Grades 1 and 2. I don’t want an institution that views science as a congestion to teach it to the future generation because if they do, they will only end up alienating the kids to science.

In fact, we are better off with a public ignorant of science than a public alienated to science. Scientific ignorance can be remedied by a few years of quality education and public information. I know this because I am the product of our public elementary school system, and when I entered high school I was almost a science ignoramus. A few years of good education cancelled all my years of bad education.

 

Bad science teaching causes alienation toward science.

Before we move on, let me illustrate how bad my elementary education was. I had one science teacher who taught us that a monkey-eating eagle was a monkey. I also had one science teacher who was a creationist, and another who was a moon hoaxer. I also remember being scolded by another teacher for bringing encyclopedias to school and allowing my classmates to revel in them. The encyclopedias were “too advanced” for us, that teacher said. To be fair, I had good elementary teachers too. Sadly, the effect of one bad teacher requires the correction of five good ones.

Now let us proceed to the main point. There is a fundamental difference between being simply ignorant of science and being alienated to it. Good education can only be effective in minds that are not yet alienated to science. For my part, I am very thankful for my few good science teachers – who are, by the way, glowing embers in the dark world of our public education system – for keeping my sense of wonder alive throughout all those years of horrible science teaching. I believe I wouldn’t be writing this essay right now if it were not for the fact that my sense of curiousity survived all those years in a public elementary school.

 

The ivory tower of science: where science is exiled by bad science teaching.

However, when you have teachers believing that science is a mere body of knowledge to be handed down to the kids for their uncritical consumption, you will end up with students knowing some but understanding nothing. Worse, you might even end up with minds that acquired a resistance to learning. This is what I mean by alienation to science. If you shove scientific facts down a student’s throat without providing that fact some human dimension, that student will view science as a form of punishment. They will then be conditioned, à la Pavlov’s dog, to run for the hills whenever they smell a hint of science in the air. Sadly, such a conditioning has been going on for decades now, as indicated by the uncontrollable spread of the “nosebleed” meme. One wonders whether these people actually imagine Science as the school bully repeatedly punching them in the face until their noses bleed.

Bad Science: “I’mma make your nose bleed!”

Worse than a nation that views science class as our local equivalent of Western culture’s gym class is a public that has been so confused by bad science education that they can’t tell science from pseudoscience. A public that jumps into any bandwagon containing the words ‘quantum’, ‘ions’, ‘vibration’, ‘crystals’, and ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis’ is a public that is not only easily hoodwinked by charlatans, but is also a breeding ground for such charlatans. But can you blame people who are easily impressed by ‘biodynamic agriculture’ and ‘ultrasupermegahyper-ionic water’ given that their science teachers simply flooded them with scientific jargon most of the time? Teaching so many scientific facts without teaching the scientific method and critical thinking is cultivating a culture of unquestioning acceptance of anything that sounds esoteric. Look around you and ask whether this is not what has been going on in our science education system for some time now.

 

Esoteric = Science? Unfortunately, many people think so.

 

The First Thing About Science

Earlier I made the bold claim that some of our leaders do not know the first thing about science. But what is the first thing about science? I believe we all know and agree why science must be taught to kids as early as possible. But why can it be taught as early as possible?

Well, the first thing about science is that it is founded on a set of values. In effect, science education is values education. A person cannot understand science without imbibing at least most of its virtues.

 

Science is a very human activity.

Science is difficult, yes. Science does not end in being amazed and awed, indeed. Science is not all about the happy-happy-joy-joy, true. That is why when science is taught, you do not simply teach it as a body of knowledge and not even as a body of theories. When science is taught, it must be taught as a human activity. And like all human activities worth pursuing, it requires a certain set of attitudes.

Among the virtues required by science are curiosity, attentiveness to detail, ambition, and intellectual honesty, all of which can be taught to kids as early as possible. In fact, for many kids these virtues need not be taught but only encouraged and reinforced.

Children are so naturally curious about the physical world that one should be impressed at how good our educational system is in killing their sense of wonder. Science can be a very difficult subject. This is why wonder and awe are necessities of science education and not merely ornaments or embellishes. For a kid whose curiosity has survived years of bad education, the uphill journey to scientific understanding is not only worthwhile, it is enjoyable for its own sake. On the other hand, without an eagerness to learn new things about the world, the rigors of science will be corporal punishment to a student.

 

Musing on the subtleties of bathroom hydrodynamics.

Similarly, children are naturally ambitious. Sadly, years of watching television and cultural conditioning skews this sense of ambition by a great deal. (Kid A who wants to be an artista was cheered on by her relatives while Kid B who wants to be an astronaut was pitied for being an odd little girl who’s probably a tomboy.) And it doesn’t help that science teachers do not impart a hunger for excellence, either. In most science classes, grades are the ultimate reason for listening to the teacher. Forget about discovering the cure for AIDS or solving the efficiency problem of solar energy; as long as you pass the subject or got a 90+, you’re doing fine. What many people fail to see is that ambition is what propels cutting-edge science. No matter how many practical technologies were spawned as byproducts of sending space probes to distant worlds, no one can deny that humans shoot rockets to the sky primarily to push the boundaries of what we can do.

Being a difficult subject, the rigors of science also build a character of discipline and patience. After all, science is all about looking at and dealing with the world in an orderly manner. The discipline of mind that science (and mathematics) teaches is something that is rarely matched by other subjects. It might sound like a stretch, but teaching a kid to keep her room in order and teaching her that there is order in the universe have a lot in common. I can’t think of any parent who does not want her child to imbibe the sense of orderliness that science teaches best.

Speaking of discipline, science also requires another kind of mental regularity in that it demands constant and consistent use of critical thinking and logical reasoning. From a very early age, children can show signs of these in the way they value evidence and logical consistency. For example, some kids can start calling bullshit on tall tales even while very young. However, science cannot thrive on mere flashes of critical thought. For a child to have a scientific mind, that child must be taught to consistently demand evidence for claims.

 

Demand for evidence whenever appropriate. (It’s always appropriate.)

Finally, being a human activity, science requires a healthy mix of cooperation and competition. In teaching science, one must teach both group learning and self-learning.

 

Science Education as Values Education

The whole point of the preceding discussion is to show that science is not so far from GMRC (Good Manners and Right Conduct) after all. And if we can and should teach GMRC from a very early age, the same must hold true for science.

After all, the contents of science are secondary to its methods and values, because the facts and theories can change but the values don’t. Concentrating on the contents of science is what causes our public’s alienation with science. Hence, the loss of two years of content-centered science education is, as Garrick Bercero also argued, not such a big loss. In fact, I even view it as a gain. A lot of ignorant but receptive minds is better than a host of minds resistant to scientific learning.

I believe that science subjects from the first grade to the sixth should be very light on their content and should concentrate on the values, especially on the sense of wonder and ambition. Grade school science should also emphasize activity (observing, experimentation, questioning, self-learning) and not knowledge.

As I have said many times, science is very hard to master. But with a sense that in doing science you are part of a human enterprise that seeks to solve the Sphinx’s riddle of the universe, all the difficulties of science becomes part of the fun of it. A proper science education should breed kids who, when faced with a difficult scientific problem, say “Bring it on!”

Hence, before we demand more hours of science education, we must first demand that our science teachers understand the first thing about science.

 

Science will go nowhere without ambition.

Photo credits:

• knowyourmeme.com
• nytimes.com
• christianhumanist.com
• ihatebullies.com
• rickygrice.blogspot
• blogs.discoverymagazine.com

Can Everyone Be A Texan?

Many opponents of the RH Bill and of population management in general deny that the world is overpopulated. To support their denial of overpopulation, conservatives usually claim that everyone alive today can fit inside the state of Texas, leaving the rest of the planet blissfully empty of humans. A moment’s thought is enough to come up with definitive arguments against this everyone-can-be-a-Texan scenario. Unfortunately, the said scenario keeps on getting parroted, and by no less than our own anti-RH senators like Tito Sotto.

So how do we elegantly debunk the we-can-all-fit-in-Texas scenario and other similar baloney “arguments” commonly used by RH Bill opponents? The answer comes from the environmental sciences.

 

My Very Own Patch of Earth

How does your lifestyle affect the environment? To answer this question, environmental scientists William Reese and Mathis Wackernal invented the simple but powerful concept of ecological footprint. Your ecological footprint is the total area of bioproductive land and sea needed to sustain your lifestyle. The name ecological footprint is therefore well chosen because it essentially measures how heavily you tread on planet Earth.

The Energy Library gives the following definition of a bioproductive patch of Earth:

 1. able to produce and sustain living organisms

2. specifically, describing land area that is capable of providing natural substances that support human activities; e.g., land used for growing food crops

In other words, a bioproductive patch of Earth is an area that produces goods and performs services that have economic value to humans.

Now, let us get back to ecological footprint. I wanted to know what my ecological footprint was, so I went here to take a test that gives me a rough estimate of its value. After taking the test (I tried my best to give the most accurate and honest answers possible) I found out that my ecological footprint is around 1.8 hectares. That’s 18,000 square meters of the Earth’s sea and land that’s dedicated to support my lifestyle. (I tried other tests, and they gave me answers ranging from 0.90 hectares to 5.5 hectares. I think 1.8 hectares is the most accurate. I encourage the reader to take other tests, for example this or this.)

How do I make sense of my 1.8-hectare footprint? To make it easier to explain my ecological footprint, I tried splitting it into several divisions. (The divisions that follow are mine. Environmental scientists have yet to reach a consensus on how to divide the ecological footprint.)

One portion of my 1.8-hectare footprint consists of the total land and sea area needed to grow and process everything I eat. This is called my dietary footprint. You can think of my dietary footprint as the total area of all the farmland, orchards and fishing areas where the things I eat are grown or caught.

Of course, I need water too. A good fraction of my ecological footprint consists of my freshwater footprint. This is the area covered by all the freshwater sources tapped to give me water for drinking, bathing, washing my clothes, flushing the toilet and many more.

Another part of my ecological footprint is the patch of forest and shallow seas needed to absorb my yearly carbon emission. My carbon emission is the total amount of carbon dioxide I directly or indirectly add to the atmosphere every year. For example, when I commute from home to work, I use buses, cars, and trains that run on the burning of fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is one byproduct of the burning of fossil fuels. The area needed to absorb my carbon emission is the now well-known carbon footprint. Notice that your carbon footprint is only a subset of your ecological footprint. Reducing one’s carbon footprint is good, but it’s not good enough. (Carbon footprint is more naturally measured in metric tons.)

And yes, let us not forget all the waste products I produce. The area in the landfill taken up by all the non-biodegradable garbage I produce in a year can be lumped under my waste footprint. Other parts of my waste footprint include the total area required to recycle my recyclable waste and decompose my biodegradable waste.

In my day-to-day life I also need go to school, to work or to some places of leisure. To do all of this, I need to use roads, railways, airports and seaports. The said places I mostly share with other people. My share in all these built-up areas I want to call my built-up footprint. Also included in my built-up footprint are my shares in government buildings and other public structures such as shopping malls and places of recreation.

My energy footprint is my share in the area taken up by all the power plants, refineries and LPG factories built to produce the energy I consume in a year.

The connections in the web of nature are delicate and intricate. Just because an area in the Amazon Rainforest remains “untouched” by humans does not mean that it is unaffected by human activities. Similarly, when we overfish one species, we are not affecting only that species but are affecting an entire food web. Overfishing tuna, for example, may greatly affect countless other marine species. My share in the human impact on habitats I’d like to call my biodiversity footprint. Biodiversity is a measure of the richness of life. There are several ways to measure biodiversity. One way is to count the number of unique species living in an ecosystem. Another measure called the Simpson index takes into account the percentage of each subspecies or breed in a given habitat. Sometimes, the number of unique habitats in a given region is also used to measure biodiversity.

What else can one find in my 1.8-hectare ecological footprint? Let me see. How about that patch of forest cleared to supply me all the paper and other wood products I use in a year? And how about that patch of mountain quarried to mine the minerals required to supply me all my metallic needs? The area needed to produce the raw materials and the goods I use in a year I’d like to lump under my goods footprint.

The foregoing breakdown of a person’s ecological footprint is far from exhaustive (and even farther from authoritative). However, I tried to outline the major components of an average person’s ecological footprint to provide the issue some perspective.

According to estimates published by the Global Footprint Network in the National Footprints Account 2010 Edition, the ecological footprint of the average Filipino is 1.3 hectares. This is a bit higher than India’s 0.90 hectares and nearly five times lower than the Netherlands’ 6.2 hectares. The United States’ average footprint is a whopping 8.0 hectares. (Other estimates peg the average Dutch footprint at 5.9 hectares and the average American footprint at an unbelievable 9.7 hectares.)

The average citizen of the world has a footprint of 2.7 hectares. However, the average citizen of a developed country has a 6.1-hectare footprint while the average citizen of a developing country only has a 1.2-hectare footprint. This disparity comes from the differences in lifestyle and available technologies. People living in poor countries don’t have a small footprint by choice. If you barely have enough money to feed yourself, then you cannot consume much. This translates to a small footprint. However, it is known that as a developing country makes its way out of poverty, the average footprint of its citizens sees a dramatic increase.

 

How Many Earths Are We Gonna Need?

If everyone on Earth lived like me, how many Earths would we need? How about if everyone on Earth lived like the average Dutch? What if everyone lived like the average American? And is it true that everyone alive today can live comfortably as Texans? Before we can answer that, let’s go through some preliminaries.

It is first important to understand the concept of biocapacity. The biocapacity of a region is a measure of the population it can support. In more technical terms, biocapacity is a weighted total of the area of bioproductive land and sea in a given region. Being a weighted total, when we count the biocapacity of the world, the Sahara Desert will not contribute much even though its area is quite large. On the other hand, the biocapacity of the seas in the Philippines would be exceedingly high even though their total area is less than that of the Sahara Desert. In terms of biocapacity, two of the biggest giants are the Amazon Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef system. The Philippine seas are not far behind.

Biocapacity is measured in global hectares (gha.). The global hectare unit of measurement was invented to accommodate the fact that not all patches of Earth are equally productive or capable of sustaining life. However, on average, 1 global hectare is equal to 1 normal hectare. Therefore, when I say 1.30 global hectares, you can simply think of it as 1.30 normal hectares. (As a matter of fact, I have been using this simplifying assumption in the previous paragraphs.)

The total biocapacity of the Earth is estimated to be 12 billion global hectares. That is, the Earth has 12 billion hectares of land and sea that is capable of sustaining human life. If human civilization uses less than 12 billion hectares, then it can exist for an indefinite period of time. Humans can exist for very long if they use up less than 12 billion hectares of Earth because nature has the ability to repair itself even after human damage has been done. A civilization that uses less than 12 billion hectares of the Earth has a sustainable existence.

Recall, however, that the average person on Earth has an ecological footprint of 2.7 hectares. There are more than 7 billion people alive today. If every one of them has a footprint of 2.7 hectares, this puts total footprint of humanity at around 19 billion hectares. In other words, human civilization is currently exploiting around 19 billion hectares of the Earth’s land and sea for all of its operations.

But wait, something seems wrong. Didn’t I just say that the Earth has only 12 billion hectares of sustainably useful land and sea? But why is human civilization using 19 billion hectares? What’s going on here?

The discrepancy in the Earth’s total biocapacity and human civilization’s total ecological footprint results in what is called unsustainable existence. At present, human civilization is degrading the Earth’s capacity to support life by operating with a deficit of 7 billion hectares.

If you divide 19 billion hectares by 12 billion hectares, you’d get something close to 1.5. This means that to sustainably support human civilization’s current operation, we’re going to need 1.5 Earths – that is, 1½ Earths. But we’ve only got one planet. This doesn’t sound good.

And it only gets worse. Remember that the world’s population is growing at an alarming rate. The human population growth rate in the year 2011 was estimated to be 1.8%. If this does not decrease significantly, then by the year 2016 the world population will be at 7.4 billion! Assuming the average ecological footprint per person remains at 2.7 hectares, by 2016 the total ecological footprint of human civilization is already 20 billion hectares. By then we’ll need 1 and 2/3 Earths!

But the assumption that the average ecological footprint per person remains at 2.7 hectares is unrealistic. All indicators show that as Third World countries emerge out of poverty, their ecological footprint will increase by as much as 400%. Assuming a steady rate of development in the Third World, the ecological footprint of the average person in the year 2016 will increase to 2.9 hectares. If 7.4 billion people each have a footprint of 2.9 hectares, this means that by 2016, humanity’s total footprint will reach 21.5 billion hectares. By that time, we’re going to need 1 and ¾ Earths to sustain such an operation!

One and three quarters Earths is hardly the size of the state of Texas. There goes the everyone-can-be-a-Texan scenario down the drain!

Here’s another way to play the game. It is widely known that for most people living in the developing world, the American lifestyle is the paragon of progress. For example, middle and upper class Filipinos show all the signs of wanting to live like Americans. But what does the American lifestyle cost planet Earth? Recall that the average American has an ecological footprint of 8.0 hectares. If all the 7 billion people alive today were to live like Americans, the total ecological footprint of human civilization would be a gargantuan 56 billion hectares! To support such a footprint, we’re going to need 4 and 2/3 Earths!

But what if we live like Western Europeans? They’re not as consumerist and wasteful as the Americans, after all. If we all live like the average Dutch, then our footprint per person will be 6.2 hectares (this will include the area of all the cannabis farms, oh yeah). If all the 7 billion people alive today were to live like the Dutch, then our total footprint as a civilization will be 43 billion hectares. We’ll be still running a huge deficit since the Earth has only 12 billion hectares to offer. To support 7 billion people living like the average Dutch, we’ll need 3 ½ Earths. It’s not as bad as the 4 2/3 needed when we’re going to live like Americans. However, 3 ½ Earths is still something we don’t have.

We have but one planet Earth. We have but one Pale Blue Dot.

 

How Many Philippines Are We Gonna Need?

Now let us take the numbers game to the local level. Recall that the average Filipino footprint is 1.3 hectares. That is in fact a small number. If all of the 7 billion people alive today were to have a footprint that size, we’re going to need less than one Earth.

Sounds great? Nope. Here are the reasons why.

First, the fact that you are reading this implies that your footprint is probably larger than 1.3 hectares. How do I know this? Well, you have Internet connection at home, don’t you? If you don’t, at least you have money to spend on computer rental. Either way, the fact that you are reading this implies that you are more affluent that the average Filipino. As of November 2011, there are 101 million Filipinos alive. A person who can go online and read this essay is certainly in the upper quartile of that 101 million and even probably part of its upper 10%. (Yes, you don’t have to be rich to be part of the Philippine’s most affluent 10%. After all, ten percent of 101 million is more than 10 million.)

So yes, to have a 1.3-hectare ecological footprint you have to live like the average Filipino, which means you have to be really poor. Of course, Mr. or Ms. Average Filipino does not exist in real life, but if you take a quick look at the standard of living of most Filipinos, you will get an idea of how our hypothetical Average Filipino will live if he were alive.

Second, even with the seemingly small 1.3-hectare ecological footprint, we are already over taxing our beautiful country. According to the National Footprints Account, the Philippine islands and its surroundings seas have a total biocapacity exceeding 115 million hectares. That’s pretty big for a country the size of the Philippines. As a matter of fact, the Philippines contains nearly 1% of the world’s total biocapacity. This should be a small wonder given that the Philippine seas are among the richest in the world. However, all this richness is being degraded because we are running on an ecological deficit. If all the 101 million Filipinos alive today were to have a 1.3-hectare footprint, the national footprint of the Philippines will be 131 million hectares. This is obviously larger than the 115 million hectares we have. The difference between our national footprint and our national biocapacity translates to environmental degradation. Environmental degradation includes but is not limited to deforestation, land and water pollution, habitat and biodiversity loss and resource depletion. Also, because of our current economic set-up, this also translates to social inequity.

 

How Can We Save the Earth? How Can We Save the Philippines?

There is an umbrella answer to the questions above: We must reduce our ecological footprint. But how doe we do that? Now that is the subject for another post.

For now, the lesson I want all of you readers to take home is this: We can all fit in Texas, but we can’t all live in Texas. Since one obvious way to reduce our ecological footprint as a nation and as a civilization is to curb the population explosion, population management measures like the RH Bill are both important and urgent. Anyone familiar with the quadrants of priorities knows that such important and urgent bills must be top priority. Unfortunately, many people in power have very skewed sense of priorities. For those of you who know how to prioritize properly, I urge you to keep on supporting the RH Bill. The fight for the RH Bill is a fight not only for the Filipina mothers, it is also a fight for Mother Earth.

 

Image Sources:

• electrictreehouse.com
• core77.com
• ecologytamra2011